Notes

Ukraine war could last for years, warns Nato chief
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.

Maybe Russian forces get bogged down, hampered by low morale, poor logistics and inept leadership. 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. That the war has now escalated beyond the two countries’ de facto border has raised the stakes of the conflict, threatening both Ukraine’s sovereignty and that of its neighbors, many of which are now justifiably asking whether they could be next. Depending on how long the war lasts, it remains far from certain whether lawmakers will keep funding Ukraine aid packages.
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.

More than a year of fighting
Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street,
New York,
NY 10036. "There is not going to be https://diigo.com/0vatxm ," former U.S. "There may be an effort to create it but the Ukrainians are not going to go gently into the good night. They are going to fight like hell."

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, conceded in an interview that his country had “concentrated our energy supply too much on Russia” to the point that it was not possible to change course “if the worst came to the worst”. But it was a reminder that Russian doctrine allows for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. 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”. There are concerns that, given Trump's previous good relations with Moscow and "America First" policy, aid for Ukraine could be shelved rapidly. 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.
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.

Russian advances in the east
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 the last few months Russian and Ukrainian forces have battled for control of territory in the country's east - with Moscow making slow advances in recent weeks.


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.

Is Russia still using the concept of denazification as justification for the war? — Anya
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.

As such, many Ukrainians are against the war, with "no war" becoming a common slogan. Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv. This week, Mr Putin put his nuclear forces on a higher level of alert. The port city of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control despite facing a relentless assault from Russian forces for days on end. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority.
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".

War actually does something that we cannot do in peacetime. 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. What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle.
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.


"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.


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