Notes

How will the war in Ukraine end? The potential paths forward in Vladimir Putin's ill-conceived invasion
The reason, Fazal said, was that the Russians have not managed to establish air superiority; they cannot get their wounded soldiers out quickly enough, and therefore many of them die. In his dissertation, and in his subsequent book, “War and Punishment,” Goemans laid out a theory of how and why some wars ended quickly and others dragged brutally on. The war in the title was the First World War; the “punishment” was what leaders in Germany, in particular, feared awaited them if they brought home anything less than a victory. When Goemans’s book came out, in 2000, it was the first modern full-length study devoted entirely to the problem of war termination, and it helped launch the field. Ukraine is assembling a force of more than 100 western Leopard 1 and 2 tanks, plus others, and a similar number of armoured vehicles that it hopes to use whenever the spring muddy season eases, to smash through Russia’s defensive lines in a D-day offensive.


But Russia under Putin has
never ended its wars at the negotiating table; at best it has frozen them, keeping its options open. Russia has shown zero interest in making concessions that would come close to the minimal requirements of Ukraine and its allies. As long as his military avoids total collapse, and he believes there is a chance of political change in the West, Putin will likely keep sacrificing Russians to stay in the fight. A second way for Ukraine to win — at least theoretically — would be through a diplomatic agreement. Meanwhile, there is no guarantee that the United States and its allies will continue paying for Ukraine’s offensive operations for as long as it takes.

Ukraine will press Russia around Crimea
Now, a collection of Western tank-type vehicles is slated to arrive on the front lines this spring, with training already underway in donor countries. 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. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia — never,” President Joe Biden said in a speech in Poland this year, and rightly so. Last week, another senior Nato military chief said countries needed to be on alert "and expect the unexpected". Adm Rob Bauer, who heads the alliance's military committee, said the public needed to change their mindset for an era "when anything can happen at any time".

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. They believed the wars that they had studied could shed light on the current conflict. Some recent statements that exaggerate Ukraine’s military successes to the point of claiming that the current military aid process will allow Ukraine to defeat Russia are yet another case of when limited military victories are given far too much importance. Congress provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid. A Christmas Eve story in the New York Times claimed that Putin might be trying to find a way out.
Given the probable level of mutual tension, it might require a demilitarized zone (DMZ) and a UN or independent peacekeeping force. Even if such a zone were created, both sides would also continue to build up their military capabilities and positions on the edge of any ceasefire line or DMZ. Its attacks to date on Ukraine’s civil facilities have had a serious impact but have not yet had the character of systematic efforts to cripple key civil systems and functions and do so on a nationwide level. https://diigo.com/0vdt2k has also shown more skill in dealing with sanctions and economic warfare than the U.S. and other planners estimated when they imposed them. If the war continues into the next fall and winter, Russia may find it easier to ride out the current patterns of economic warfare than a democratic Europe.

Joe Biden Calling Donald Trump the 'Sitting President' Sparks Ridicule
"But if Central/Eastern Europe felt abandoned by those powers, it's not hard to imagine a Polish or even a Ukrainian nuclear programme." "The United States maintains by far the world's most powerful nuclear stockpile, but with the US out of the mix, the French and British, with their much smaller arsenals, would be Europe’s only nuclear deterrent," Mr OBrien says. This could see states like Poland and the Baltics decide to aid Ukraine on their own, which "might leave NATO's eastern front vulnerable and cause a crisis within the EU and European NATO". He says Europe is rich enough to do so if it has the political will, pointing to a recent report from the Estonian Ministry of Defence suggesting that committing 0.25% of GDP annually towards Ukraine would provide "more than sufficient resources". A prominent war expert says the US is on the verge of lessening its support for, or even withdrawing from, NATO - with potentially catastrophic consequences for Europe. "The document referred to in the Financial Times article is a background note written by the secretariat of the council under its own responsibility which describes the current status of the Hungarian economy," the statement by the senior EU official said.


Never,” United States President Joe Biden said in Poland last week, a day after a previously unannounced visit to Kyiv. The money is coming through and Kyiv is still holding steady, battered and bruised but determined to resist Russian aggression. Putin can’t keep his forces on the offensive all year long and now has to keep an eye out for new Ukrainian strikes on assets not only in Crimea (such as the recent hit on a large landing ship in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in occupied Crimea) but also in Russia proper.

Is Russia still using the concept of denazification as justification for the war? — Anya
"I believe that the war may stretch well into 2025 and the international support for both sides would prolong the war as neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve major breakthroughs and declare victory," Gok told Newsweek. There is a difference between keeping options open, perhaps seeing what response tentative, private probes might get, and going public with a concrete proposal. Most likely a new diplomatic effort would start with a third party initiative. Anything that generated any momentum would certainly change the context. Then both sides would have to show they cared about peace, even while reserving their positions.

To Reiter, Putin was enough of a dictator that he would be able to back off. Then, having encountered minimal opposition and a few cheers, he carried on towards Moscow. The suggestion is that this is to prepare for eventual negotiations, although the main need is simply for Ukraine to show that it can play a long game. So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control.
Massive cyber-attacks sweep across Ukraine, targeting key national infrastructure. President Zelensky is either assassinated or flees, to western Ukraine or even overseas, to set up a government in exile. President Putin declares victory and withdraws some forces, leaving enough behind to maintain some control.


Yet, the United States does not have to take a formal official position to create the proper groundwork. It can create a variety of unofficial forums that include its partners and publicly examine the options that offer the best real-world chances in negotiating peace. By determining their relative risks and benefits, the United States can develop a negotiating strategy that might influence Russian and Ukrainian behavior over time. A wide variety of unclassified official statements and media reports show that NATO and member country military planners are focusing on the right priorities. At present, however, these planning efforts rely more on political promises than the availability of actual resources.

The coming year will demonstrate whether Russia - and its suppliers in North Korea and Iran - or Ukraine - and its Western backers - are able and prepared to meet the voracious demands of industrial-age warfare. In his office, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, told the BBC that "Prigozhin is not the most senior. They might become the new political elite". The Western countries have gone from training the Ukrainians on specific systems to training larger units on how to carry out coordinated attacks. And, surprisingly, Russian and Ukrainian officials have met for talks on the border with Belarus. The lack of political noise in Moscow does not mean that there is no unease or dissent among the elite.
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