Notes

UK citizen army: Preparing the 'pre-war generation' for conflict
Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper. Unnamed Indian government sources have suggested India wants to distance itself from Russia, according to Reuters news agency. "A frank and constructive dialogue is expected to improve relations between states," the Ukrainian president's office said on its official channel on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of Mr Szijjarto, Mr Kuleba and Mr Yermak. Mr Szijarto will be in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. Peter Szijjarto has arrived in Ukraine for talks with senior officials today.

If the war continues into the next fall and winter, Russia may find it easier to ride out the current patterns of economic warfare than a democratic Europe. But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict. Mykhailo Podolyak, another close adviser to President Zelensky, agreed there were "several groups of people who want to take power in Russia". William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at RAND and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the U.S.-USSR commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.
"Russia's current strategy does appear to be one that will avoid nuclear escalation, which likely reflects pressure from China not to use tactical nuclear weapons." "NATO members like Poland are very hawkish and are willing to move at a much faster pace in comparison with countries like Germany," he says. "The United States is somewhere in the middle but is hoping to ensure that they do not escalate the pace of military support, particularly offensive weaponry, to Ukraine too quickly to avoid a nuclear escalation between the US and Russia. 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. Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region. Ukraine will probably try to exploit the success it has had in re-establishing its control over the western Black Sea and its vital trade corridor to the Bosphorus.

Moscow snatches victory
Still, it’s an open question whether the U.S. will be able to indefinitely continue its current level of support, said Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior adviser who has studied the volumes of artillery used in the war. Also in the mix is a pledge from France to ship AMX-10 RC light, wheeled tanks. And its use carries with it the risk, again, of even greater involvement in the war by the U.S. But it could also, at least temporarily, halt the advance of the Ukrainian Army.


It did so over the entire length of the war from the seeming collapse of the Taliban in 2002 to U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government and forces in 2021. The nature of these U.S. failures changed over time, but they cumulatively proved to be far more important than the Afghan war successes in battle—almost all of which were U.S. or allied-driven. 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. “Branislav is very worried,” Goemans told me, “and he is not a scaredy-cat.” Goemans was also worried, though his hypothetical time line was more extended.

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 703
President Putin could seek to regain more parts of Russia's former empire by sending troops into ex-Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia, that are not part of Nato. 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. Maybe https://telegra.ph/Is-Russia-invading-Ukraine-and-what-will-happen-next-Ukraine-02-09-2 get bogged down, hampered by low morale, poor logistics and inept leadership. Maybe it takes longer for Russian forces to secure cities like Kyiv whose defenders fight from street to street. The fighting has echoes of Russia's long and brutal struggle in the 1990s to seize and largely destroy Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.


That said, there wasn't much of a political will for third countries to sanction Cuba at the time. It's possible today's situation with Russia might make such a policy more politically palatable if the U.S. attempted it again, though I can't find any serious proposal in the government to do just that. It is theoretically possible for the U.S. to sanction countries that maintain economic ties with Russia.


While no one can provide definitive answers, academic research on war gives us some insights into how the conflict in Ukraine might unfold. Peter A. Wilson is an adjunct senior international and defense researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and teaches a course on the history of military technological innovation at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at RAND and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the U.S.-USSR commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. If the ground freezes deep and long enough, Ukraine's army might conduct combined arms operations to push deeper into occupied areas. Even Crimea could be vulnerable if Ukrainians seized the rail hub of Melitopol.

Putin seems to have assumed that Ukraine had only made limited progress in improving its forces since 2014, and that Russia could repeat its success in occupying Crimea. Tying Ukrainian NATO membership to such conditions would give Putin another incentive never to meet them. While defense spending in the United States and Europe is trending upward, in large part because of Russia’s attack, industrial capacity to crank out weapons and ammunition has emerged as a bottleneck. The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves. We now know the Russian leader is willing to break long-standing international norms. Maybe it takes longer for Russian forces to secure cities like Kyiv whose defenders fight from street to street.
This is partly because of the uncertainties surrounding the level of US and European support, a matter to which I will return in my conclusion. But it was largely because of the meagre returns from Ukraine’s intensive efforts to liberate more territory. Mr Danilov said they included security forces, officials and representatives of Russia's oligarchs, who believe that Mr Putin's decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine in February last year has been a personal disaster for them as well as a threat to Russia.

The war has already become very costly for the oligarchs and these costs will only increase with time. Mr Szijarto will be in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. It usually took two sides to start a war, even if they had different culpability, and it usually took two sides to end it; the vanquished may accept the terms that were proposed last week, but what was to keep the winner from inventing new terms? It unleashed its secret weapon, the U-boat, to conduct unlimited operations on the high seas. And Russia has a seemingly endless supply of young men whose lives it is willing to waste in this war. Ukraine’s war reaches the one-year mark with no immediate end in sight.
Ukraine's commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi's assessment that fighting had entered a "stalemate" was rejected by Zelensky amid rumors of a split between the country's most prominent figures, and reports of a reshuffle of top brass in the New Year. "The only way I can foresee the Ukraine war possibly ending in 2024 is if Vladimir Putin dies," Beth Knobel, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, and former CBS News Moscow bureau chief, told Newsweek. That could end up looking something like the Korean peninsula, with a demilitarised zone between Ukrainian and Russian-controlled territory, or a grinding perpetual conflict that flares up and down, eventually resulting in an uneasy truce. But to analysts, like Morris, the prospect of Putin being removed is extremely unlikely — and the chances that whoever replaces him will be less hawkish are even more remote. “There isn’t really any source of alternative power to coalesce around while Putin is healthy and alive,” said Morris.


Zelensky's visit to Washington, D.C., on December 12, was lower key than the red-carpet treatment he previously received. Instead of the $61 billion he was asking for, he got a renewed pledge by President Joe Biden and a $200 million chunk of military assistance for air-defense interceptors, artillery and ammunition. "The U.S. will pull the plug on Ukraine under another Trump administration, pure and simple," said Chris Dolan, professor of political science at Lebanon Valley College, who has written about U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO. "But I think Joe Biden will manage this relatively well. The current struggle in Congress over foreign aid, I think, will be settled but perhaps not super soon. This is more about domestic politics and electoral pressures." Russians go to the polls from March 15, less than a month after the full-scale invasion marks its second anniversary.


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