Notes

Ukraine: How might the war end? Five scenarios
It is theoretically possible for the U.S. to sanction countries that maintain economic ties with Russia. The best precedent for this is perhaps the Helms–Burton Act, which extended U.S. sanctions on Cuba toward any foreign company doing business with both Cuba and the U.S. at the same time. When President Bill Clinton signed that law in 1996, several countries accused the U.S. of violating their sovereignty, passing their own laws to make the U.S. regulation effectively unenforceable.

368,000 Ukrainian people had crossed the border into Poland, Moldova and other neighbouring countries. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said last week that its main goal in 2024 is to boost its domestic defense industry in the face of uncertain future supplies from its Western allies. In Syria, where it has been propping up President Bashar al-Assad, Russia has used a cycle of offensives followed by ceasefires to slowly split and crush the opposition. They want to take over entire Ukraine and perhaps even, being realistic about this, subsequently in Moldova and other parts of the former Russian empire, whether we’d be the Czarist or the Communist one. I mean, they are willing and Putin is certainly not stupid either. I just read another article in the New York Times about these people who are saying like, “Oh, Ukraine should negotiate and should make some kind of peace deal,” but these people are idiots.
And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That’s because the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust finite resources and, hence, the parties are more willing to gamble. https://diigo.com/0vcip4 spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end.

Putin ousted
Russia is keeping those fighter jets grounded for now and is attacking with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles. For Ukraine, the problem is it's running low on these missiles. If it runs out, then Russia could unleash its fighting planes.


The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States. After imposing sanctions and export controls, Lichfield expects the West’s latest economic pressure point — oil price caps — to yield results because the Russian economy is so tightly linked to the energy market. “It would have to get pretty bad for the Russians to get there,” he said, adding that there’s no way of knowing how many reserves the government stashed away after years of fat checks from energy sales. And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult.

What are the Ukrainian refugees who fled their country doing now? Are they able to get jobs in their host countries? — Laurel
He insisted after his visit that Ukraine would not cede any of the occupied territories in the south of the country to Russia, which occupies the bulk of the country’s coastal areas. Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times, said the supply of weapons had to continue, and that it would be necessary to “preserve the viability of the Ukrainian state” by providing financial support “to pay wages, run schools, deliver aid and begin reconstruction”. “Ukrainian forces have likely suffered desertions in recent weeks. However, Russian morale highly likely remains especially troubled.


The EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova is more than just symbolic. 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. The US defence aid package is held hostage by what President Biden rightly labelled "petty politics" in Washington. And the future of the EU's economic aid is seemingly dependent on Hungary's incongruous stance.


European countries have largely outsourced much of their military capacity and thinking on strategy and security to the States through NATO. Alexei Kulemzin said Ukraine was behind the strike on the eastern Ukrainian city, which is currently under Russian occupation. “The Ukrainians are also hoping that new deliveries of US and Western heavy weapons, particularly long-range artillery, will help them to turn the tide against the Russian army and regain some territory,” Shea said. As Russia’s military campaign grinds on, experts weigh in on the most likely scenarios going forward. By the same token, if Ukrainian forces start driving the Russians back, Ian Bond says, "there will be voices in the West saying 'don't try and recapture parts of the Donbas that the Russians have controlled since 2014'." "If the Russians completely break through Ukrainian lines in the east and start heading for the Dnieper River, the question of how much territory Ukraine should be willing to sacrifice to achieve a ceasefire is going to move up the agenda."

NATO does not want a full-scale war in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows he would lose a conflict with a 30-member military alliance led by the Americans. 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. There seems to be some degree of sensitivity in Ukraine to Russia's claims it's waging a proxy war with the West over Ukraine. For Ukraine, the problem is it's running low on these missiles. The plant, on the north-western outskirts of the town, dominates the main road into Avdiivka and, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) believes if Russian forces were to secure it, resupplying the town would "become increasingly difficult for Ukraine". 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.
And the question you gotta ask yourself is why that is. Domestic politics and they still have plans and ideas and you know, they think they can teach Ukrainians some new information or hope that the west will fall apart. Hein Goemans I mean, some people are trying to pitch this as, oh, the United States versus Russia, which is a big mistake.


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. "Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices." All of this, of course, assumes that Russia’s war doesn’t escalate beyond Ukraine.


The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the return of major war to the European continent. The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too. To indicate which parts of Ukraine are under control by Russian troops we are using daily assessments published by the Institute for the Study of War with the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project. To show key areas where advances are taking place we are also using updates from the UK Ministry of Defence and BBC research.

Mr Putin is widely believe to have miscalculated the scale of the Ukrainian resistance. You can’t kill just Ukrainians and no Russians and therefore swing the tide on the battlefield. And on the other hand is the west, which is telling the Russians this war is gonna be too costly because we have sanctions on you and your complete economy will implode.
NATO does not want a full-scale war in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows he would lose a conflict with a 30-member military alliance led by the Americans. I wrote about this recently, noting that we're seeing air battles daily, but pilots are rarely involved. It's perhaps the only thing more complicated than sanctions enforcement, and this question touches on both. Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Website: https://diigo.com/0vcip4