Notes

Fears of a post-Putin Russia haunt the US as it delays helping Ukraine with F-16s
"But even if Putin dies, I think there's only a miniscule chance that Russia would back off from the war, because it has already invested so much of its national image in winning." There was, for example, a thread of continuity between the first and second world wars. To be sure, a lot happened in the intervening years that could have changed the direction of what followed. But, said Macmillan, “the first world war laid the groundwork that made the second possible”. https://matzen-larsen.thoughtlanes.net/ukraine-war-three-ways-the-conflict-could-go-in-2024-1706779849 lay in a humiliating peace treaty imposed on defeated Germany.


As things stand, Putin, despite crushing setbacks on the battlefield, appears to be prepared for a long fight and believes Russia will win. Russia’s allies like China – which has been a lukewarm friend to Putin in his war against Ukraine – have also been unable, or unwilling, to force him to the negotiating table. While the West could warn Kyiv that it would stop supplies of weapons or financial support if Ukraine were to insist on defying the US or Europe, “this kind of threat is not credible”, Slantchev told Al Jazeera.

Zelenskyy on Trump: If someone can really end a war in 24 hours, I'd be thrilled
Ukrainian forces, once equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be “designed to punch a hole through a defensive network,” Donahoe predicted. Army’s maneuver warfare school at Fort Benning, Georgia, said Western upgrades offer Ukraine the chance to dominate the close fight with Russian adversaries and conclude the tactical fighting to its advantage. In Jensen’s view, even the collapse of Russia’s conventional force or a traditional Ukrainian victory may not mean the war is over; either could lead to nuclear escalation by Russia.

But polls show that does not equal pacifism, with the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supporting a prolonged defensive war. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine. In addition to being willing to accept huge losses, the Russians have shown themselves to be adept at defensive operations and have improved their use of drones and electronic warfare capabilities. "Unfortunately, there is a very real chance that the Russo-Ukraine war will last well into 2024 and possibly beyond," he said.
The most common cause of the breakdown, according to war theorists (and again borrowing from economics), was some form of informational asymmetry. Simply put, one or both sides overestimated their own strength relative to their opponent’s. There were many reasons for this sort of informational asymmetry, not least of which was that the war-fighting capacity of individual nations was almost always a closely guarded secret. In any case, the best way to find out who was stronger was to actually start fighting. Many wars ended in just this way, with the sides reëvaluating their relative strengths and opting to make a deal.

On the offensive this spring
This includes overwhelming domestic support for joining NATO and the European Union, despite both blocs expressing hesitation to Ukraine's membership for decades preceding the war. In his TV address, Mr Zelensky said the conflict "will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy". Writing on the messaging app Telegram, he said Ukrainian troops had repelled 11 attacks on the frontline - with eight tanks among the Russian vehicles destroyed.


The effectiveness of the drone and missile attacks on Ukraine can be judged. He will have been able to see whether or not the EU and the US have sorted out their funding packages. So while in principle looking at a map creates new options for the next stage of the Russian offensive in practice losses of this sort reduces the ability of Russian forces to build on any gains. Ukraine’s Commander in Chief General Valery Zaluzhnyi has stressed the importance of inflicting heavy casualties on Russia, “until the enemy gives up fighting against our country,” while acknowledging that its hard to know in the Russian case when this point would be reached. In a June article by Sergei Karaganov, an established ultra-nationalist analyst, which I discussed in October, most interest was in his urging Putin to take more nuclear risks (advice rejected by Putin).

One year after full-scale war returned to Europe for the first time since World War II, the invasion of Ukraine grinds on with no end in sight. Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s). The United States has already done much in working with its partners to support Ukraine and check Putin.

The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. "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. Russia was not present at the discussions, however, and U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby stated ahead of the talks that the White House did not expect any "tangible deliverables."


Putin dithered, not dealing with the dispute while in its early stages, and then could only be rescued by doing a deal with people he’d just called traitors, albeit one on which he later reneged (as with so many of his deals). Yet six months on Putin does not give the appearance of having suffered long-term harm. Perhaps this remains a situation in which absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. The lack of political noise in Moscow does not mean that there is no unease or dissent among the elite. There was certainly more optimism surrounding the Ukrainian position at the start of the year than there was at the end.


Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine. I recently spoke to a number of war-termination theorists, including Goemans, to see what the theoretical perspective could tell us about the war in Ukraine. The theorists turned out to be an engaged and lively group, most of them glued to Twitter and Telegram, in multiple languages, as they tried to follow the war in real time.


As for Ukraine's offensive, Mr Podolyak said the Wagner mutiny did not last long enough to influence the fighting along a front of 1,800 kilometres, the longest - he said - in any war since 1945. Russia is keeping those fighter jets grounded for now and is attacking with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine. U.S. trainers continued working in Ukraine right up until the full-scale Russian invasion a year ago. The bill, which will funnel support to Ukraine for about the next five months, includes some $6bn budgeted for armoured vehicles and air defences. With no end in sight to the fighting, the US is sending more military, economic and humanitarian aid.

While some Western governments will secretly balk at the ongoing costs of supporting Ukraine (the U.S. has already pledged over $40 billion in security assistance to Kyiv) many understand the high stakes, Barrons said. At least some will also see the war as a test of just how much the United States is focusing on China to the point where its commitments outside Taiwan and dealing with China have far less importance. Russia’s allies like China – which has been a lukewarm friend to Putin in his war against Ukraine – have also been unable, or unwilling, to force him to the negotiating table. As Gen Sir Patrick Sanders stated several times in his speech on Wednesday, "Ukraine really matters". 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. As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs.
They are problematic for Putin because if taken seriously they would demand far more of Russia than Ukraine (as Zelensky was quick to notice). This is because they have stuck with the UN Charter which precludes the sort of territorial annexations expected by Putin. The most recent reports suggests that a deal is getting closer in the Senate but it will not be finalised until later in January, assuming that there are not further delays. Even with these new packages some of the shortages – particularly in artillery shells – will continue. This is already starting to be felt in front-line operations so that commanders are having to ration allocations, making awkward priorities about operational needs. As a guide to what was to come this was, I’m afraid to say, pretty poor, not least because of the starting assumption that Ukrainian commanders would be aware that frontal assaults normally end badly and so would avoid.

The conflict has lasted longer than many regional wars, and no victory or retreat is in sight. One reason why the effects may be contained might be the speed with which the crisis came and went. All these measures were approved when both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats. Mr Prigozhin's guns for hire have played a critical role in keeping the war going against a backdrop of morale problems, strategic blunders and lack of adequate training.
But others have responded by "prepping for war" - stocking food and fuel. There is a sense in the upper echelons of the British military that many politicians and most of the public have not grasped the threat they see. It is the duty of the military to analyse that threat, and they still might be proved wrong. But European nations closer to Russian borders appear to be taking it more seriously. Mark Temnycky, a Ukrainian-American journalist and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center said that delays in 2023 allowed Russia to fortify positions in the south and east of Ukraine, regroup and re-strategize.

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