Notes

What history shows: How will the war in Ukraine end? Russia-Ukraine war
The immediate need is for Ukraine to win the fight, or at least check Russian advances, but it is all too clear that Ukraine may need sustained military and civil aid for years to come. In addition, it will need massive aid in economic recovery once the fighting ends. NATO needs to make a massive effort to rebuild its forces to deter Russia from any further military adventures. Over-optimistic rhetoric aside, the United States and its strategic partners recognize this. They are rushing to try to provide the right kind of military and financial support Ukraine needs to survive and have any chance of pushing Russian forces and occupiers out of Eastern Ukraine. No grand strategy for the Ukraine war can have meaning unless Ukraine can win its near-term battles at the military level, and this is only part of the story.


In World War I, a poorly motivated and provisioned Russian army collapsed, helping bring down an out-of-touch czar. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits frontline troops, Putin is mostly hidden from view far from any fighting. No surprise that morale of Ukrainian soldiers is strong and that of Russians is weak. The conflict has lasted longer than many regional wars, and no victory or retreat is in sight. Predictions merit only guarded confidence when so many have proven wrong, e.g., that Kyiv could fall within days or Russia would quickly gain air superiority over Ukraine. Russian nationalist voices have already expressed skepticism in Russia's ability to launch a successful offensive, but Ukraine's defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, says Moscow could "try something" to mark the anniversary of its initial invasion.

The most strategically important part of Ukraine that remains occupied by Russia is Crimea, which is what we call the "decisive terrain". https://pastelink.net/qsjwfgs4 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. What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle. Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest.

Is UK conscription for a citizen army a realistic plan?
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. 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. A lot of the Ukrainians I've talked to, while they appreciate the Western weapons supplies, say this is their war to fight. 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. The invasion has been a disaster for President Vladimir Putin and in order to justify it at home he at least has to take control of Ukraine's Donbas region, after which he can falsely claim that the army saved Russian citizens persecuted by Ukraine. As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs.

As painful as it is to make compromises in a negotiated settlement, Mr Cancian says Kyiv and Moscow may one day decide peace is the only way forward. Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. The UK's defence secretary has also warned that we need to be prepared for a war. The classic example from the First World War was the Bolsheviks’ refusal, in the wake of their seizure of power in Russia, to continue the fight against Germany; proclaiming “neither war nor peace,” they simply left the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The nature of these U.S. failures changed over time, but they cumulatively proved to be far more important than the Afghan war successes in battle—almost all of which were U.S. or allied-driven.
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". The overall effect means Finland can muster one of Europe's largest armies. The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves. Finland, Nato's newest member and a country which has an 800-mile border with Russia, has wider conscription.

Russia’s Putin says ‘obvious’ Ukraine shot down plane over Belgorod
And Ukrainians were putting a priority on liberating territory and that required a land offensive in some shape or form. This Swedish Air Force handout image from March 2, 2022, shows Russian fighter jets violating Swedish airspace east of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland. Ukraine's air defenses have been surprisingly effective against Russia's air force. Wars require the tacit approval and support of those on the home front. 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. Vladimir Putin depends on oligarchs, the Russian mafia and the military for his survival.


This challenges any firm commitment to implementing programs and contracts needed to provide the personnel, readiness, modernization, and war reserves they require. 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.

Ukraine's Army Could Win
The latter might be deterred in part by NATO nuclear maneuvers or by Chinese, Indian, or other international opposition. Given the pattern of missile attacks to date, and the development of hypersonic and other potentially dual-capable, long-range strike systems on both sides, it might well lead both sides to deploy larger longer-range precision strike systems to deter or pressure the other side. It might well revive reliance on active theater nuclear forces at the same time. It would probably leave sanctions and trade barriers intact and fail to give Russia and Europe any clear basis for pulling back from a posture of mutual distrust and conducting at least the low-level equivalent of economic and political warfare.

To a lesser extent, Putin is dependent on the support of the general population. Kremlin regime change, a Russian army collapse, or a Ukrainian win are possible. In theory, that gives the West influence over the direction of the war. The current U.S. and European focus on war to the near exclusion of peace fails to do this. This is because they have stuck with the UN Charter which precludes the sort of territorial annexations expected by Putin.
Despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin's closest EU ally, vetoing a $55 billion support package from Brussels for Kyiv in mid-December, backing from other European allies has been strong. And that has direct consequences for the future of the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian demands for Ukraine’s demilitarisation and neutrality are a “non-starter”, according to Slantchev. Polls in Ukraine show that the public overwhelmingly rejects concessions to Russia.


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. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force. The U.S. is also training about 100 Ukrainians on the Patriot anti-missile system in Oklahoma. The Western countries have gone from training the Ukrainians on specific systems to training larger units on how to carry out coordinated attacks. Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Russia could make a push for more land or the flow of weapons to Kyiv could be halted, bringing forward a stalemate. “There is a real problem here in that we may be over-encouraged by Ukraine’s early successes in counterattacking last year,” said James Nixey, a Russia expert at the Chatham House thinktank. North and South Korea remain on the edge of a far more dangerous war some seventy years after the Korean War began.
And then, in the weeks after Goemans and I first spoke, events accelerated rapidly. Ukraine launched a remarkably successful counter-offensive, retaking large swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region and threatening to retake the occupied city of Kherson. Putin, as predicted, struck back, declaring a “partial mobilization” of troops and staging hasty “referendums” on joining the Russian Federation in the occupied territories. The partial mobilization was carried out in a chaotic fashion, and, as at the beginning of the war, caused tens of thousands of people to flee Russia. There were sporadic protests across the nation, and these threatened to grow in size.


Ukraine has also shown that it is a much stronger partner than Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It has its own internal failures, as its recent anticorruption drives have shown. However, Ukraine has shown that it is more united, better governed, and more able to fight on its own. In response, companies on both sides of the Atlantic announced plans to restart production lines for artillery shells and other weapons considered somewhat arcane until recently.

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