Notes

When will the Russia-Ukraine war end? Experts offer their predictions
For example, the tactic of repurposing dishwasher electronics for weapons, mocked in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means “somebody thought about that from the beginning,” he said. In the course of the past year, Putin’s domestic propaganda strategy has morphed from a message of “fight the Nazis” in Ukraine to “fight the West” there, said Stefan Meister, a Russia and Eastern Europe expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. “The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said. "They understand the wider strategic point, which is that this is a confrontation between the West and Russia and at stake is not just the future territorial integrity of Ukraine but the security construct for Europe and the West with Russia," he noted.

Senior officials from around 40 countries, including China, and India, held talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the weekend with the aim of agreeing on key principles that could underline a future settlement of the war. That’s changed, with Germany now pledging to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks and approving other countries’ requests to follow suit. If you complete the survey, you’ll have a chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort earbuds. A prominent war expert says the US is on the verge of lessening its support for, or even withdrawing from, NATO - with potentially catastrophic consequences for Europe.
The coming year will demonstrate whether Russia - and its suppliers in North Korea and Iran - or Ukraine - and its Western backers - are able and prepared to meet the voracious demands of industrial-age warfare. 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. We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months.

The War in Ukraine Is Just Beginning
In the meantime, the ISW noted in an analysis, "Ukrainian forces establish and consolidate defensive positions to conserve manpower and resources for future offensive efforts." "I'm afraid we need to steel ourselves for a long war," he wrote. "Time is the vital factor. Everything will depend on whether Ukraine can strengthen its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its capacity to attack." At the moment, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has riveted the world, drawing more attention than the ongoing slaughters in other nations—a double standard that has been widely noted.

There is a war because both sides ask more than the other’s willing to give. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. It’s gonna take a lot of dying and a lot of death and destruction before both sides say, okay, we kind of, we can anticipate what the war is gonna end like and like, and we’re going to accept that and we’re gonna make a deal on that basis. But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict.
This Swedish Air Force handout image from March 2, 2022, shows Russian fighter jets violating Swedish airspace east of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland. Ukraine's air defenses have been surprisingly effective against Russia's air force. This is a grinding trench and artillery war of attrition. The invasion has been a disaster for President Vladimir Putin and in order to justify it at home he at least has to take control of Ukraine's Donbas region, after which he can falsely claim that the army saved Russian citizens persecuted by Ukraine.

Putin ousted
Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. Ukraine's defensive forces transform into an effective insurgency, well-motivated and supported by local populations. And then, perhaps after many years, with maybe new leadership in Moscow, Russian forces eventually leave Ukraine, bowed and bloodied, just as their predecessors left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade fighting Islamist insurgents. “Either Ukraine keeps fighting with sustained Western support and eventually forces Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine entirely, with the possible exception of Crimea,” he said, referring to the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. He noted, however that this would pre-suppose a Russian military collapse and a change in the country’s leadership – something that could take “a long time to achieve and would necessitate considerably greater military capabilities” than Ukraine currently possesses.

Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation. It's become clear that the counteroffensive won't produce quick results and that success — however that might be measured in terms of retaking Russian-occupied territory — is not guaranteed. The war between Russia and Ukraine entered a new phase this summer when Kyiv launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, and there were hopes Ukraine would regain the upper hand.

First of all, it’s not gonna be very effective on the battlefield. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive - some of each could combine to produce different outcomes. Tanks were spotted moving towards the capital, whilst Russian troops seized the city of Melitopol in Ukraine’s south-eastern Zaporizhzhya region. The city of Bakhmut, which has endured some of the heaviest fighting of the war, has been under Russian control for several months and, although Ukraine gained some ground in the surrounding areas over the summer, the battles continue. Hein Goemans It seems to me that Putin might have tried it early on the war, but he can’t do it anymore.
Ukrainian forces have adopted a more defensive stance as circumstances dictate; a senior army general warned last week that front-line Ukrainian troops face artillery shortages and have scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance. Weather conditions are deteriorating in Ukraine, with mud, freezing rain, snow and ice making offensive and reconnaissance operations challenging. Intense fighting continues nonetheless, and particularly around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces are conducting offensive operations and have made some recent, confirmed advances. Hein Goemans Going back to the analogy of the first world war one more time, what really changed attitudes in Germany was the collapse of Bulgaria and Austro-Hungary suing for peace.

What are the Ukrainian refugees who fled their country doing now? Are they able to get jobs in their host countries? — Laurel
Volker said that aid packages must include more advanced weaponry for Ukraine, however, like F-16 fighter jets which have been pledged by Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. "Russia can win the war, or the Ukrainians can win the war. And, as you're seeing things now, if you really think about it, what has been achieved this year? Very little has been achieved by Russia, and you can say the same thing for the Ukrainians," he said. It didn't, and the prospect of a breakthrough in 2024 is also unlikely, military experts and defense analysts told CNBC. At the start of 2023, hopes were high that a much-vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive — expected to be launched in the spring — would change the dial in the war against Russia.


One way to do that is with an armistice, a temporary agreement to cease military operations, but one that does not conclude the war decisively. That scenario could embolden critics of the war; increase public discontent with continued funding for Ukraine; and pose a problem in terms of arms production and supplies for the West. Defense experts say it's unlikely the counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year.


The US, UK and Germany have promised to send 10 rocket artillery systems, but Ukrainian advisers have called for 60 or even 300. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said in a morning update that the intense fighting meant combat units from both sides were “likely experiencing variable morale”, a rare acknowledgment of the pressures faced on both sides. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will throw in all the reserves they have … Because there are so many of them there already, they’re at critical mass,” Haidai told Ukrainian television. 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. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force.

“Everything I have come to learn about the will and determination of the Ukrainians leads me to conclude retaking Crimea is within reach, and they need the artillery that will enable hitting targets — the sites of missiles destroying infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said. President Putin declares victory and withdraws some forces, leaving enough behind to maintain some control. Diplomats say feelers are being stretched out to Moscow. Russian air strikes destroyed a government building where at least 10 people were reported dead, according to Ukrainian officials.
There can be secessionist movements in the administrative units in Russia, or it can be a long kind of peaceful stalemate or ceasefire along the 1991 border where there’s occasionally shots fired, but no dramatic incursions and no dramatic battles. It’s heartbreaking to say, but it’s just bleak, Gideon. Hundreds of thousands of people are gonna die and for really no good reason. I mean, there is a deal available, but Russia can’t take it.

Twenty million Soviets — Russians, Ukrainians and others — died fighting Hitler's armies. And that’s exactly why he designed a system like that, right? It's perhaps the only thing more complicated than sanctions enforcement, and this question touches on both. Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured.
Ukraine’s forces remain on the defensive in the eastern Donbas region, where fighting continues in Sievierodonestsk. Serhiy Haidai, https://ambitious-camel-g3r4ks.mystrikingly.com/blog/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-uk-government-response of the Luhansk region, said Russia was massing forces in an attempt to take full control of the city after weeks of fighting. Last week, Ukraine ordered its forces to withdraw from the key city of Severodonetsk, which had been the target of an intense Russian offensive for weeks. While its forces are pushing to also seize the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russia on Thursday announced the withdrawal of its troops from the strategically important Snake Island. Moscow called it a “gesture of goodwill” aimed at showing it backed efforts to restart food exports from Ukrainian ports, but Kyiv hailed it as a victory, saying it had forced the Russians to retreat. Hein Goemans Well, the Germans quote unquote, “lost” on the battlefield and they kept fighting another four years.

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