Notes

What could happen in the Russia-Ukraine war in 2024?
"Unless circumstances change, it is unlikely that the war will end in 2024," he told Newsweek. "Despite the slow gains in 2023, Ukrainian morale remains high. The majority of the country still believes that they will win the war, and they will not accept any other outcome than the total removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands." Both black boxes have been retrieved from the Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport aircraft that was shot down Wednesday, a Russian state-run news agency said Thursday. Western leaders have said the war in Ukraine could last for years and will require long-term military support as Russia brought forward reserve forces in an apparent attempt to capture the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk. 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.


So, in recent years, Ukrainians have reached further into their history to argue that Ukrainian independence existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire before it. Russian Communist supporters hold flags including one of the Soviet Union, as they take part in a rally next to the Karl Marx monument, marking the "Defender of the Fatherland Day," the former "Day of the Soviet Army", in downtown Moscow on Feb. 23. People often accuse Putin of wanting to resurrect the Soviet Union. Yet one could argue that Putin is more interested in gathering the lands of the Russian empire. In fact, in his speeches about Ukraine, he criticizes the Soviet leadership for creating Ukraine, the Soviet republic that later became an independent country, on a whim.

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On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was “no use in setting an end date” to what Russia calls “special military operation in Ukraine”, adding that its objective to “liberate” Donbas had not changed. 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. Then, only then did the German people find out that the war was lost because Ludendorff had set up a Ministry of Information saying, “We’re gonna win, we’re doing great. We’re gonna win, we’re going to win.” And finally, reality and truth hit him smack in the face that they couldn’t win and they wouldn’t win. What it will take is for the Russians to realise, for the Russian people, that they can’t win this war. There can be a revolt against Putin, which we think is unlikely.

Or is he kind of a regime that cannot fully repress any domestic opposition? This same logic can be applied to the use of nuclear weapons. Footage "of the aftermath of a missile strike that hit Kyiv's main TV tower and a nearby Holocaust memorial showed a gruesome scene of blown-out cars and buildings and several bodies on fire," The Washington Post reports. If conflicts in places such as Ethiopia, Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, and Yemen have proved anything, it’s that wars are easy to start, but are also brutal, intractable, and difficult to end. 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.
Putin illegally annexed four territories from Ukraine in September and now presents Ukraine's efforts — backed by the West — to take back its own territory as a fascist attack on the Russian homeland. As such, many Ukrainians are against the war, with "no war" becoming a common slogan. But polls show that does not equal pacifism, with the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supporting a prolonged defensive war.

Kherson's underground resistance: How ordinary people fought Russia from the shadows
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. “This story is as big [as], if not bigger, than 9/11 and the fall of the Soviet Union,” Katerji said, comments that have partially echoed those made by Britain’s foreign secretary. We have no idea what the consequences of this will be long term or even in the near short term.” The biggest unknown is not when this war will end—because it won’t anytime soon—but where. "We declared a special military operation because we had absolutely no other way of explaining to the West that dragging Ukraine into Nato was a criminal act," Mr Lavrov told the BBC. The country's Western allies have so far offered it major weapons supplies but Ukraine says it has only received a fraction of what it needs to defend itself and is asking for heavier arms.

And even once Russian forces have achieved some presence in Ukraine's cities, perhaps they struggle to maintain control. Do they think that Putin, after he has been successful and shown that he’s been a great leader, and he won against the mighty Nato alliance and all this force, that he’s gonna stop? Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured. After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine.
The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves. In Sweden and Norway, conscription is partial - not everyone gets drafted. But it boosts the strength of the professional armed forces, which is often relatively small. Conscription requires young men and women to serve for a limited time in uniform. It means that some of the population will have had some military training - and can then be assigned to reserve units should war break out. The UK's defence secretary has also warned that we need to be prepared for a war.

Ukraine's gains
I just really don’t understand the strategy or the plans of Scholz. But if the west decides they’re not gonna support Ukraine fully anymore, then Ukraine is in a really tough spot and they’ll have to dramatically lower aims. There’s no way they’re gonna push back Russia to the 1991 borders and they may have to accept the four annexed areas as part of Russia forever.

The ISW does note that Russia's advances might be the result of Ukrainian forces withdrawing to "more defensible positions" near Robotyne. The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves. 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. Russia also intensified its bombing of cities on Tuesday, including in civilian areas.
His case has been closely watched as an indication of how far the Kremlin will tolerate aggressive criticism of its war effort in Ukraine, something it calls a "special military operation". Instead she called her husband, who asked a friend of his called Dmitry Kasintsev to let her stay at his apartment that night. Kasintsev was sentenced on Thursday to one year and nine months for helping her to hide, despite testimony from Trepova that she had never met him before and he had nothing to do with the bomb. Knowing that she risked arrest, she ignored an instruction from "Gestalt" to head to the airport and catch a flight. The prosecution argued that she had known about the bomb and "acted deliberately with the aim of destabilising the Russian Federation and discrediting the special military operation" — the official name for Moscow's war effort in Ukraine. Senior Ukrainian officials have neither claimed responsibility nor denied involvement in Tatarsky's death, with presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak describing it as "internal terrorism".


The town is sometimes described as the gateway to the city of Donetsk, which has been occupied by Russia and its proxy forces since 2014. Taking Avdiivka - which lies close by https://pastelink.net/submit would allow Russia to push the front line back, making it harder for the Ukrainian forces to retake the territory. Putin denied a second wave of mobilization was necessary for now, but in early December he signed a decree ordering the military to increase the number of Russian armed forces personnel by 170,000, bringing the total number of troops to 1.32 million. A year ago, Ukraine's international military support was solid with NATO pledging to support Kyiv for "as long as it takes" as it defended itself against Russia's invasion launched in February 2022. "My sense is that even without outside support, the Ukrainians will continue to fight," she told Newsweek.

There’s no way they’re gonna push back Russia to the 1991 borders and they may have to accept the four annexed areas as part of Russia forever. Hein Goemans Well, the Germans quote unquote, “lost” on the battlefield and they kept fighting another four years. A spate of Ukraine-linked attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure have reportedly led Moscow's energy ministry to propose restricting flights over energy facilities. But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war.
When Ukraine retook Robotyne in August it was hoped that its forces would be able to cut the land corridor to Crimea, making Moscow's supply lines more complicated. With both Ukraine and Russia investing heavily in the war, it's unlikely there will be any negotiations to end the conflict or agree to a cease-fire. Defense analysts argue that neither side would want to go into negotiations unless they're in a position of strength and able to dictate terms.


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