Notes

When will Ukraine war end? How Putin could be stopped and timeline of Russias invasion
The Ukrainians do not have unlimited resources of course, especially artillery ammunition and long-range precision weapons. With just three UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have forced the commander of the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw a third of his fleet from Sevastopol. It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. The military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines.


The support of the west is crucial, but it is not on behalf of the direct interests of the United States and the west. It is certainly on behalf of the indirect interest of the security architecture of Europe and the whole world. But the people are doing the fighting and the dying, and whose interests are most directly at stake are the Ukrainians. But there is no smooth drop-off — most of them end relatively quickly. For https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/WhatCouldHappenInTheRussiaUkraineWarIn2024 and Ukrainian forces have battled for control of territory in the country's east - with Moscow making slow advances in recent weeks.

When will Ukraine war end? How Putin could be stopped and timeline of Russia’s invasion
Russian forces were bombarding Kharkiv, and they had taken territory in the east and south as far as Kherson, and surrounded the port city of Mariupol. The current situation also suggests a prolonged fight, given the significant loss of territory Ukraine has suffered in recent weeks in the east – half of the Donetsk region and almost all of the Luhansk region – alongside Russia’s early gains in the south. Some analysts say Kyiv would lack leverage if it entered peace negotiations now, with the result likely being “peace” as dictated exclusively by Moscow. As the sun rises on a seventh day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a 40-mile-long Russian military convoy appears stalled about 20 miles north of Kyiv, and the Ukrainian-held cities of Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mariupol are encircled.


Moreover, such a scenario would not be politically justifiable for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That would make him the president who not only lost the war but also large parts of his country. Emily Harding, a former National Security Council staffer, warned Tuesday that the U.S. and Europe should prepare for 8-10 years of economically disruptive conflict in Ukraine, Roll Call reports. If the U.S. sticks with Ukraine and supports its shadow war, "Russian casualties will be through the roof," former CIA Afghanistan operations chief Michael Vickers told the same CSIS audience. "This could be an insurgency that is bigger than our Afghan one in the 1980s in terms of things we could provide them that would really hurt Russia." Still, "given the durability of the Ukrainian resistance and its long history of pushing Russia back, the U.S. and Western powers do not believe that this will be a short war," CBS News reports.

What do the Ukrainian people want the world to know besides their need for our support and military aid? — Erik
"It seems that there are a number of so-called Western leaders who possess the explicit need for self-humiliation, in combination with a total detachment from political reality," Artis Pabriks tweeted. "We need to make sure that Russia is driven out of Ukraine by the Ukrainians," the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said last week. Russia admitted 498 of its troops have been killed and 1,597 wounded but Ukraine continued to put those numbers in the thousands. The UN says more than 870,000 people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began. An armoured convoy of tanks and military vehicles, reported to be 40-mile long headed towards Kyiv. Ukrainian officials reported that up to 5,000 Russian troops had been killed so far.

Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles. They can actually, you know, try to recreate trench warfare if they want to. Hein Goemans Well, some people would say yes, because it makes clear that this is a war caused by a commitment problem that no peace deal will stick.
The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, told the Senate in January the Biden administration still expects the $45 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in December to last through the end of this fiscal year. But the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, warned at the hearing that the current funding level “does not preclude” the administration from needing to request more assistance before the end of September. Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured.


I think that if Zelenskyy made a deal which gave up, you know, the four annexed areas. I think he might also be removed from office, but he’s not gonna be killed, because he is a war hero and he has a lot of credit and it’s very different. Ukrainians also make a calculation it’s just worth the cost. And the Russians are trying to influence that calculation.

The will of the people are getting bombed is hardened. Nearly a year later, Russia’s army is no closer to winning the war — and has even lost part of the territory that Putin attempted to annex last September. 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.
As some experts have suggested, Putin has the upper hand in being able to escalate the war. In fact, the longer the fighting lasts, the more likely it is that Western support will soften, according to Loukopoulos. “For the time being, political support for Ukraine remains strong in the US and Europe, and the EU can hardly abandon a country to which it has just granted EU candidate status,” Shea said.


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. He agreed to a House rules change that would allow any member to initiate a vote to remove him as speaker, forcing him to tread carefully even on issues that enjoy majority Republican support — such as Ukraine assistance. For its part, the Biden administration has started deliberations around the thorny question of whether helping Ukraine should entail retaking Crimea, which Russia seized and then annexed in 2014. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, expects the war to end at the negotiating table, but said serious diplomacy hasn’t begun because Putin is still clinging to “maximalist” goals. An inability to do so could foster economic discontent capable of turning public opinion against the war, Lichfield told Defense News. Moscow has proved resourceful when it comes to building autonomy into critical goods, Lichfield explained.


After Mr Macron and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held an 80-minute phone call with Mr Putin on Saturday, aimed at exploring ways to enable Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, Latvia's deputy prime minister lashed out on social media. But despite the dire state of Russia’s forces and the years-long quagmire its economy faces, Putin has shown no indication he intends to scale back his goals or seek a way out of the war, insisting Russia’s victory is “inevitable” and its “goals will be met in full”. When he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s original plan envisioned Russian forces capturing Kyiv within as little as three days. Russian troops took control of Kherson, a city of 280,000 people. Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker told CNBC he believes American and EU aid packages for Ukraine will be approved come January, saying he believed this funding would tide Ukraine over for another year, militarily.

I think that the Ukrainians are highly motivated and therefore are willing to tolerate very high costs. "I'm afraid we need to steel ourselves for a long war," he wrote. And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place. Ukraine has been calling for a large influx of western weaponry so that it can try to push back the Russian invaders, but what has been offered so far is less than Kyiv has requested. The fickle nature of the international media means that protracted conflicts quickly lose the world’s attention, if they ever had it to begin with.
He says Europe is rich enough to do so if it has the political will, pointing to a recent report from the Estonian Ministry of Defence suggesting that committing 0.25% of GDP annually towards Ukraine would provide "more than sufficient resources". Even though the end of the war is not yet in sight, he says he can envision a scenario for which a precedent exists. For Shea, there are two likely scenarios going forward. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. For all the anxieties about self-inflicted wounds and the hesitation surrounding the supply of weapons, the Western consensus over Ukraine remains remarkably intact. "He [Putin] is probably counting on US and EU resolve to weaken," she told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "as food shortages, inflation and energy prices get worse." Austria's chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said a gas embargo "will not be an issue in the next sanctions package". The former Prime Minister and President Dmitry Medvedev called that statement "rational." But the US decision announced on Wednesday to send a more advanced rocket system to Ukraine was described by the Kremlin as "adding fuel to the fire".

Here's my website: https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/WhatCouldHappenInTheRussiaUkraineWarIn2024