Notes

How Will the War in Ukraine End?
Russia might use the crisis to launch cyber and other hybrid attacks on Nato countries. It could even send troops to the three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. 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. But the idea that Ukraine can be pressured into some kind of peace is “incorrect” and “denies Ukraine their agency”, said Branislav Slantchev, a professor of politics at the University of California, San Diego, and a specialist in war negotiations and how conflicts end. It has a homegrown war machine and enormous reserves of manpower and resources, and Morris believes there is a good chance Russia can sustain the conflict for years to come. “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.

Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation. "Ukraine has to show it can make progress, but everybody knows that, given the size of the force that they have, that they are not going to throw every Russian out of Ukraine in 2023," retired British Gen. Richard Barrons, the former commander of the U.K.'s Joint Forces Command, told CNBC. It's become clear that the counteroffensive won't produce quick results and that success — however that might be measured in terms of retaking Russian-occupied territory — is not guaranteed. "The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open," said UN Secretary General António Guterres. President Macron of France has spoken to President Putin on the phone.

It’s easy to forget just how daring (or rash) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was. In this scenario, the strategists noted that a Ukrainian insurgency could force "a significant, sustained human and financial toll on Russia" as it would be required to devote far more of its resources over a much longer period of time than it had anticipated. Wars often do not end predictably, and a failure to achieve hoped-for victories often leads to a sudden change of government. The war, which ended with the Chechen capital razed to the ground and Chechen resistance largely stamped out, left a lasting imprint on Putin’s approach to regions seeking to break away from Russian influence, according to analysts.
Or, as time wears on, the war may just fall down the agenda in western countries, and resources and capital may slowly stop flowing in. This could lead to a situation where Ukraine capitulates, but this would take years. A victory in this scenario would look like mass loss of life, much of Ukraine levelled, and economic devastation for both countries.

Putinology: the art of analyzing the man in the Kremlin
We have been doing this for 200 years, in times of crisis and peace. Europe’s largest nuclear plant was shelled over the weekend, and for days Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other. The plant was seized by Russia in March and used as a military base but is still run by Ukrainian staff. The incident has prompted significant concern from international organisations, scientists and neighbouring countries. As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs.

Ukraine expert Terrell Jermaine Starr recently told me, "every step that Ukrainians took towards Europe came as a direct result of Russian aggression." After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine. But to analysts, like Morris, the prospect of Putin being removed is extremely unlikely — and the chances that whoever replaces him will be less hawkish are even more remote. I’ll tell you how my expectations of this conflict have evolved. Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more.
Many analysts say Beijing in particular is looking on as it formulates its own plans to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. The fear is that if Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine unresisted, that might act as a signal to other leaders that the days of Western powers intervening in other conflicts are over. Fighting could spread into Belarus where Russian forces are already stationed. Nato powers are already promising to build up their own forces in the alliance's eastern flank. After 2,000 anti-tank weapons were delivered last week and 30 British troops arrived to teach Ukrainian forces how to use them, the phrase "God Save the Queen" began trending on Twitter in Ukraine.

BBC News Services
“One may imagine something like the outcome of the Korean War,” with “the warring sides remaining not reconciled and irreconcilable, always on alert, but more or less securely divided,” Lipman told me. Still, she said, whatever border is drawn between Russia and Ukraine is likely to be far longer and harder to secure than the one dividing the Korean peninsula. And Russia, as a much larger country, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a significant economic player, “is no North Korea” and “can’t and will not be isolated,” she noted.


Some bars and restaurants in Kyiv were offering free drinks to anyone who had a UK passport. 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. 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.


But he said even that is not enough - so the Army should be designed to expand rapidly "to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon, and train and equip the citizen army that must follow". He is a strong believer in a professional army made up of volunteers. But he was making the point that if war broke out troop numbers would be too small. Finland, Nato's newest member and a country which has an 800-mile border with Russia, has wider conscription.

When this happens, countries often end up fighting wars of attrition that last until one side gives up. Apart from a few exceptions, almost all of the tens of thousands of people who have died in this war have been on Ukrainian territory. But the head of the British Army Gen Sir Patrick Sanders is not alone in issuing a national call to prepare for a major conflict on European soil.
“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]”. Still, Western arms — even though supplied in an incremental, cautious manner — in Ukraine have similarly been key to halting Russian advances. In theory, that gives the West influence over the direction of the war.


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. As https://anotepad.com/notes/8xbetpkj , many Ukrainians are against the war, with "no war" becoming a common slogan.


The forecasting firm Good Judgment’s superforecasters, a global network of about 180 experts in various fields with a strong track record, tend to “see a long slog coming” in Ukraine, CEO Warren Hatch told me. Some of the superforecasters, however, point to key differences between this war and past conflicts that they believe could produce a faster resolution—including the degree to which the West is arming Ukraine and punishing Russia economically. The conflict is “already a long war when compared to other interstate conflicts, and wars of this kind tend to cluster as either being relatively short—lasting no more than weeks or a few months—or averaging several years in duration,” Kofman told me. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has found that since 1946, more than half of interstate wars like the one in Ukraine have ended in less than a year, and that when such wars persist for more than a year, they last more than a decade on average. Some Ukrainian officials acknowledged the fear that gives Western leaders sleepless nights, that a public collapse of President Putin's regime might lead to real danger as his would-be successors jockey for power in a state with the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

In addition, nearly 13 million Ukrainians (including nearly two-thirds of all its children) are either displaced in their own country or refugees in various parts of Europe, mainly Poland. Although Putin attempted to build up a financial bulwark that would allow him to protect the interests of the oligarchs, the sanctions imposed by the west have undercut most of his efforts. It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels.
The vehicles carry the hope of enabling battlefield wins for Ukrainian forces that will lead to some kind of war-ending scenario — if the weapons arrive in time. Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured. And even once Russian forces have achieved some presence in Ukraine's cities, perhaps they struggle to maintain control. Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country.

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