Notes

Kremlin Denies Report Putin Reached Out to the US About Ending Ukraine War
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. Depending on how long the war lasts, it remains far from certain whether lawmakers will keep funding Ukraine aid packages. Congress provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid. Blumenthal has joined other lawmakers — particularly pro-Ukraine Republicans — in pushing President Joe Biden to give Zelenskyy most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft. “Even technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they’re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves — just people rushing across the field getting shot at,” Jensen said. And they said winning will depend on a Congress with the resolve to ensure continued support to Ukraine.

President Macron of France has spoken to President Putin on the phone. “Essentially once the West made a decision that Ukraine is important … it had to support them to the end, and that means the Ukrainians are the ones who will decide when they’re going to stop,” he said. But Russia under Putin has
never ended its wars at the negotiating table; at best it has frozen them, keeping its options open. Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region. Ever since the war began, commentators and Western leaders, including President Biden, have intimated that it should produce, if not “regime change” in Russia, then Putin’s departure. The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too.
It notes the building gives Ukraine a "localised defensive advantage" and says Russian forces will probably suffer significant losses if they attempt to assault the facility. The village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region could offer a similar stepping stone but Russian forces are reported to have made some advances in the area. Ukraine has continued ground operations on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River with heavy battles reported to be ongoing in the area around the village of Krynky, about 30km (19 miles) from the city of Kherson. "When I kind of put it all together, John, I think toward the end of this year, probably after the US elections, we've got a moment for potential negotiation," Stavridis said. But https://euronewstop.co.uk/where-is-ukraine-air-force.html and other Western leaders should tell them that this is an option they will have if their counteroffensive is still grinding on next year.

Ukraine says corrupt officials stole $40 million meant to buy arms for the war with Russia
To put a twist on an old Yiddish expression, people predict, and war laughs. 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. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force. Now the U.S. and European militaries are training Ukrainian forces in Europe.

That scenario could embolden critics of the war; increase public discontent with continued funding for Ukraine; and pose a problem in terms of arms production and supplies for the West. As things stand, Putin, despite crushing setbacks on the battlefield, appears to be prepared for a long fight and believes Russia will win. “It’s the time when you’re meant to be with your family and this is going to be the second year without him, unless there is a miracle. Subsequently, however, Russian forces have made significant gains in the south and southeast, occupying part of the Black Sea coast, Kherson province (which lies north of Crimea), most of Donbas in the east, and Zaporozhizhia province in the southeast. Meanwhile in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin told defence officials that in Ukraine he would “not give up what is ours”, while claiming the Russian military had momentum.
Then, at its July, 2024 summit in Washington, NATO would invite Ukraine to join the Western alliance, guaranteeing the security of all territory controlled by the Ukrainian government at that point under Article 5 of the NATO treaty. A second way for Ukraine to win — at least theoretically — would be through a diplomatic agreement. Any settlement based on that plan would, of course, be wonderful. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia — never,” President Joe Biden said in a speech in Poland this year, and rightly so. So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control. “You end up with something between a frozen conflict and an everlasting war, in which neither side has the energy or economy to win,” Nixey said.

More from Europe
Inflation in the Eurozone was 8.1 percent in May, the highest since 1997, and energy prices exploded. Within days of the Russian invasion, European natural gas prices had jumped nearly 70 percent, while oil hit $105 a barrel, an eight-year high. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development anticipates that the French, German, and Italian economies (the three largest in Europe) will contract for the rest of this year, with only France’s registering an anemic 0.2 percent growth in the fourth quarter. No one can know for sure whether Europe and the United States are headed for a recession, but many economists and business leaders consider it likely. “Russia’s ongoing and barbaric war of aggression against Ukraine did not just break the system. It exploited some of its many flaws to degrade its apparently unenforceable norms and values,” Tsahkna wrote.


Ukraine would be free to receive arms and military training from any country, but foreign troops and bases would be banned from its territory. So far, western countries have shown strong unity in wanting to help Ukraine force out Russia. But if Joe Biden is defeated in the US presidential election in 2024 by Donald Trump or another isolationist candidate, it could pose serious questions for Ukraine’s war effort. The US has provided €44bn ($46bn) of military support to Ukraine, and Europe (including the UK) €18.7bn, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute.


Some Republicans are saying the U.S. should stop funding Ukraine. Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly support aid for Ukraine, and most Republicans do as well. The U.S. Congress approved four separate spending bills for Ukraine in the past year totaling $112 billion.


One of Ukraine's main aims is to sever the Russian "land bridge" that stretches from Russia and across the occupied part of southern Ukraine to Crimea, but that's an area where Russia's fortifications are among the heaviest. The war between Russia and Ukraine entered a new phase this summer when Kyiv launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, and there were hopes Ukraine would regain the upper hand. One key question that could determine the war’s end game is how long Ukraine’s backers can keep up their arms donations to Kyiv. 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. It took 15 votes for McCarthy to secure the position, after which he appointed three Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas — to the Rules Committee, which controls legislation and debate on the House floor. 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.

Indeed, Putin was quite explicit about this in his press conference of 14 December. 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. 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 United States, as Ukraine’s most important military supporter, remains the center of gravity when it comes to an eventual outcome for the conflict. American leadership has so far been largely united in their support for Kyiv. And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult.

Regardless of a country’s government style, a leader is still dependent upon the support of a group of people, or coalition, to stay in power. Timothy Snyder, a historian of Eastern Europe at Yale, told me he stands by an assessment he made in October in which he similarly argued that a Russian nuclear detonation was highly unlikely. 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. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance.
More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels. The report, cites two people with close links to the Kremlin and says that senior US officials were made aware of the signals in December via an unnamed intermediary. The current war is different, with Western support helping Ukraine regain large parts of the territory Russia grabbed in the early weeks after last year’s invasion. He said there is little the West can do to stop Ukrainians from trying to take back all of their country’s territory currently held by Russia — including parts that Moscow has formally, though illegally, annexed.

Ultimately, it appears that this war will not end quickly, as it will take a considerable amount of time for either side to make the other give up. There would ideally be a return to the line of February 24th; “pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” he declared at the World Economic Forum, a talkfest in Davos. According to a poll by the independent Razumkov Centre, a majority of Ukrainians said they believe Ukraine is "heading in the right direction" in light of the war. People often accuse Putin of wanting to resurrect the Soviet Union.
In theory, they could threaten to curtail support if they grow weary of the war or if Ukraine, encouraged by its military advances, crosses a threshold that could spark an escalation unacceptable to the West. “Serbia’s war against Kosovo was ended because outside powers got involved,” she told Al Jazeera, referring to NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999. “The civil war in Northern Ireland ended partly because outside powers [the US in particular] put a lot of pressure and helped to build a framework [for peace]”.

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