Notes

When and how will Ukraine's war with Russia end?
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. Putin illegally annexed four territories from Ukraine in September and now presents Ukraine's efforts — backed by the West — to take back its own territory as a fascist attack on the Russian homeland. As such, many Ukrainians are against the war, with "no war" becoming a common slogan.


And that may take longer to fight, but the whole world will mobilise against him, support the Ukrainians, and there’s no way he’s gonna win. The only way I can see Putin use nuclear weapons goes back to this story that I told earlier about the western allies and particularly the people in Germany, who are very, very skittish about nuclear weapons. So that’s the only strategy that I can see Putin really using nuclear weapons. This would be hugely dangerous and risk war with Nato. Under Article 5 of the military alliance's charter, an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Which weapons will Washington send?
Under this scenario, Russia escalates its military operations. There are more indiscriminate artillery and rocket strikes across Ukraine. The Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes. Massive cyber-attacks sweep across Ukraine, targeting key national infrastructure.

One reason that countries such as Germany have been reluctant to send heavier weapons to the Ukrainians is that Berlin does not want to give Putin any pretext for escalation. Numbers are hard to come by, but Russia had an estimated 1,500 fighter jets before the war began and still has the vast majority of them, probably 1,400 or more. Ukrainian officials reported that up to 5,000 Russian troops had been killed so far. Russian troops took control of Kherson, a city of 280,000 people.
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. So, in recent years, Ukrainians have reached further into their history to argue that Ukrainian independence existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire before it.

Russian advances in the east
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. Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states - which are members of Nato - such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad. 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.


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. Might it be possible this war could spill outside Ukraine's borders?

Putinology: the art of analyzing the man in the Kremlin
Russia is keeping those fighter jets grounded for now and is attacking with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles. For Ukraine, the problem is it's running low on these missiles. If it runs out, then Russia could unleash its fighting planes.

The West must prepare to continue supporting Ukraine in a war lasting for years, Nato's chief has warned. Footage "of the aftermath of a missile strike that hit Kyiv's main TV tower and a nearby Holocaust memorial showed a gruesome scene of blown-out cars and buildings and several bodies on fire," The Washington Post reports. And, surprisingly, Russian and Ukrainian officials have met for talks on the border with Belarus. 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.
The will of the people are getting bombed is hardened. Hein Goemans So, well, that’s interesting, particularly in the context of your earlier question. What are the reasons why Putin keeps fighting and why he can be hopeful and think that he might pull it off in the long run is because he thinks that the west will crumble. So the more people who say let go, we should negotiate now, the long-term is favourable to Russia, the more Putin can hope that the west will in the end fail to support Ukraine. And if that happens, then Ukraine will lose on the battlefield.

So for a war to end, the minimum war aims of at least one side must change. The longer the Russian invasion continues, the greater the refugee crisis that Europe is likely to face, and the riskier the situation becomes for NATO, which has gone to great lengths to avoid being drawn into direct conflict with Russian troops. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been highly critical of the EU's financial and military aid for Ukraine and has maintained close ties with Russia. Hein Goemans I’m relatively optimistic about it, but I mean, if Trump wins in 2024, things will change. I mean, I suppose we hear from them and it’s difficult to dispute it, that they have no incentive to settle because they feel they’re fighting for their freedom and for their statehood.
Russia is also massively boosting military spending in 2024, with almost 30% of its fiscal expenditure to be directed toward the armed forces. https://etextpad.com/napmsmrqwl -industrial complex has also ramped up the production of hardware from drones to aircraft. "A couple of things ought to change," Volker told CNBC. Over the summer, however, the challenge facing Ukraine's forces was glaringly obvious as they struggled to break through heavily fortified Russian positions and lines of defenses along a swathe of the 600-mile-long front line across the southern and east of the country. A year ago, Ukraine's international military support was solid with NATO pledging to support Kyiv for "as long as it takes" as it defended itself against Russia's invasion launched in February 2022.

"There is not going to be a Vichy Ukraine," former U.S. European countries have largely outsourced much of their military capacity and thinking on strategy and security to the States through NATO. However, Mr Orban's political director said this morning that Hungary was open to using the EU budget to allow further aid for Ukraine.
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