Notes

UK citizen army: Preparing the 'pre-war generation' for conflict
The fierce determination of the Ukrainian people up to this point suggests that this will not occur any time soon. To https://matzen-larsen.thoughtlanes.net/why-are-european-defence-leaders-talking-about-war-military , Putin is dependent on the support of the general population. The public is bearing the costs of war in the form of inflation, economic decline and battlefield deaths. This suggests that the two sides will have difficulty ever resolving the information problem. When this happens, countries often end up fighting wars of attrition that last until one side gives up. It was largely apparent that Russia’s army was and is far superior to Ukraine’s in terms of stockpiles of weapons and number of personnel.

As bad as the situation on the Russia-Ukraine border is right now, it does not currently involve a direct military confrontation between Nato and Russia. That alliance’s decision, at its 2008 Bucharest summit, to open the door to that country (and Georgia) was irrevocable. The overall effect means Finland can muster one of Europe's largest armies. China intervenes, putting pressure on Moscow to compromise, warning that it will not buy Russian oil and gas unless it de-escalates.
Just ask Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose improbable assassination in Sarajevo sparked World War I. As a result, Russia essentially stopped flying fighter jets over Ukraine. Numbers are hard to come by, but Russia had an estimated 1,500 fighter jets before the war began and still has the vast majority of them, probably 1,400 or more. After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine. U.S. trainers continued working in Ukraine right up until the full-scale Russian invasion a year ago. Many Russian nationalists, though, perceive Ukraine as a breakaway region of greater Russia.

Cartoon of the day Brian Adcock
Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states - which are members of Nato - such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad. By early summer Ukraine will be able to use US-made F16 fighter jets for the first time, which it hopes will improve its ability to counter Russian aircraft and strengthen its own air defences.


In response, companies on both sides of the Atlantic announced plans to restart production lines for artillery shells and other weapons considered somewhat arcane until recently. One key question that could determine the war’s end game is how long Ukraine’s backers can keep up their arms donations to Kyiv. But another McCarthy concession — a procedure allowing 218 members to force a House floor vote on any bill — could present an opportunity for pro-Ukraine Republicans and Democrats to pass additional funding for Kyiv. Smith indicated he disagrees with the Biden administration’s decision not to send long-range missiles, noting every Ukrainian official assured him they would not use them to attack Russia.

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Yet it would be so much more likely than the present one to renounce its post-invasion territorial gains, though perhaps not Russian-majority Crimea, which, in the era of the Soviet Union, was part of the Russian republic until, in 1954, it was transferred to the Ukrainian republic by fiat. Ever since the war began, commentators and Western leaders, including President Biden, have intimated that it should produce, if not “regime change” in Russia, then Putin’s departure. And there have been no shortage of predictions that the invasion will indeed prove Putin’s death knell. There’s no evidence, however, that the war has turned his country’s political and military elite against him or any sign of mass disaffection that could threaten the state.


With Western hesitancy bolstering Russia, and in the absence of either a coup or a health-related issue leading to Putin's demise, the only foreseeable outcome will be a negotiated settlement that for now both sides continue to refuse. For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability. The EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova is more than just symbolic. It implicitly means continued backing for Kyiv, as a future in the EU for Ukraine would be impossible with a full-blown victory for Russia.


Russia's military strategy has at times been beset with logistical problems, confusing the picture of what Russia's main or immediate goals are. The analysts predicted refugee flows of 5 million to 10 million people from Ukraine to Western Europe. However it's widely expected that Russian President Vladimir Putin, loathing Ukraine's current pro-Western government and its aspirations to join the EU and NATO, wants to install a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. Close watchers of the Russia-Ukraine war say the fluid and rapidly changing nature of the conflict makes it hard to gauge what will happen next in Ukraine, with both Moscow's and the West's next moves unpredictable.

Ukraine, say, accepts Russian sovereignty over Crimea and parts of the Donbas. What comes next for Ukraine could be bleak, these experts say, with many expecting a long and drawn-out conflict, noting that even in the most positive scenario — that Russia withdraws its troops and Ukraine remains a sovereign nation — Europe is unlikely to return to the prewar status quo. Ditto the devastation it continues to create in some of the world’s poorest countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development anticipates that the French, German, and Italian economies (the three largest in Europe) will contract for the rest of this year, with only France’s registering an anemic 0.2 percent growth in the fourth quarter.
European countries have largely outsourced much of their military capacity and thinking on strategy and security to the States through NATO. Phillips P OBrien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, wrote in an analysis piece that the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House could see the US "neuter" the Western military alliance. Alexei Kulemzin said Ukraine was behind the strike on the eastern Ukrainian city, which is currently under Russian occupation. Many in the international community feared that the conflict could spread outside of Ukraine’s borders. Andrew Cottey, a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork, gave Euronews three possible outcomes for the war.

So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control. But many experts I turned to were not seriously concerned about such an outcome. Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest. It implicitly means continued backing for Kyiv, as a future in the EU for Ukraine would be impossible with a full-blown victory for Russia. To be sure, a lot happened in the intervening years that could have changed the direction of what followed.
One ex senior minister suggested to me that there was a generational divide between those who had lived with the threat of the Cold War era, and those who had not. The former minister, currently a serving Conservative MP, pointed out that the prime minister grew up without that existential threat. Yet the Army is already looking at how it might create a citizens' army. One Whitehall source told the Times that the training of Ukrainian civilians on UK soil could act as a rehearsal for rapid Army expansion. Cuts have already seen the size of the British Army fall from more than 100,000 in 2010 to around 73,000 now. Gen Sanders said that within the next three years the British Army needed to be 120,000 strong with the addition of reserves.


But they note it's crucial for Ukraine to be able to show at least some gains in order to maintain Western support for the war into 2024 — and perhaps beyond. He judges that continuing the war may be a greater threat to his leadership than the humiliation of ending it. China intervenes, putting pressure on Moscow to compromise, warning that it will not buy Russian oil and gas unless it de-escalates. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities see the continuing destruction of their country and conclude that political compromise might be better than such devastating loss of life.


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