When-and-how-will-Ukraines-war-with-Russia-end-h

Volker said that aid packages must include more advanced weaponry for Ukraine, however, like F-16 fighter jets which have been pledged by Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. "Russia can win the war, or the Ukrainians can win the war. And, as you're seeing things now, if you really think about it, what has been achieved this year? Very little has been achieved by Russia, and you can say the same thing for the Ukrainians," he said. It didn't, and the prospect of a breakthrough in 2024 is also unlikely, military experts and defense analysts told CNBC. At the start of 2023, hopes were high that a much-vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive — expected to be launched in the spring — would change the dial in the war against Russia.

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. This is a grinding trench and artillery war of attrition. https://notes.io/wpyXC 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.

Ukraine will press Russia around Crimea

Ukrainian forces have adopted a more defensive stance as circumstances dictate; a senior army general warned last week that front-line Ukrainian troops face artillery shortages and have scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance. Weather conditions are deteriorating in Ukraine, with mud, freezing rain, snow and ice making offensive and reconnaissance operations challenging. Intense fighting continues nonetheless, and particularly around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces are conducting offensive operations and have made some recent, confirmed advances. Hein Goemans Going back to the analogy of the first world war one more time, what really changed attitudes in Germany was the collapse of Bulgaria and Austro-Hungary suing for peace.

There can be secessionist movements in the administrative units in Russia, or it can be a long kind of peaceful stalemate or ceasefire along the 1991 border where there’s occasionally shots fired, but no dramatic incursions and no dramatic battles. It’s heartbreaking to say, but it’s just bleak, Gideon. Hundreds of thousands of people are gonna die and for really no good reason. I mean, there is a deal available, but Russia can’t take it.

Is Russia still using the concept of denazification as justification for the war? — Anya

Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. Ukraine's defensive forces transform into an effective insurgency, well-motivated and supported by local populations. And then, perhaps after many years, with maybe new leadership in Moscow, Russian forces eventually leave Ukraine, bowed and bloodied, just as their predecessors left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade fighting Islamist insurgents. “Either Ukraine keeps fighting with sustained Western support and eventually forces Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine entirely, with the possible exception of Crimea,” he said, referring to the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. He noted, however that this would pre-suppose a Russian military collapse and a change in the country’s leadership – something that could take “a long time to achieve and would necessitate considerably greater military capabilities” than Ukraine currently possesses.

• President Zelensky is either assassinated or flees, to western Ukraine or even overseas, to set up a government in exile.









• Ukraine, after all, is situated at the doorstep of the European Union and NATO, both of which have a vested interest in ensuring that the country’s sovereignty is maintained and that Russia’s aggression is curtailed.









• The fighting has echoes of Russia's long and brutal struggle in the 1990s to seize and largely destroy Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.









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Ukraine’s forces remain on the defensive in the eastern Donbas region, where fighting continues in Sievierodonestsk. Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said Russia was massing forces in an attempt to take full control of the city after weeks of fighting. Last week, Ukraine ordered its forces to withdraw from the key city of Severodonetsk, which had been the target of an intense Russian offensive for weeks. While its forces are pushing to also seize the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russia on Thursday announced the withdrawal of its troops from the strategically important Snake Island. Moscow called it a “gesture of goodwill” aimed at showing it backed efforts to restart food exports from Ukrainian ports, but Kyiv hailed it as a victory, saying it had forced the Russians to retreat. Hein Goemans Well, the Germans quote unquote, “lost” on the battlefield and they kept fighting another four years.

The costs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

For example, the tactic of repurposing dishwasher electronics for weapons, mocked in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means “somebody thought about that from the beginning,” he said. In the course of the past year, Putin’s domestic propaganda strategy has morphed from a message of “fight the Nazis” in Ukraine to “fight the West” there, said Stefan Meister, a Russia and Eastern Europe expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. “The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said. "They understand the wider strategic point, which is that this is a confrontation between the West and Russia and at stake is not just the future territorial integrity of Ukraine but the security construct for Europe and the West with Russia," he noted.

One way to do that is with an armistice, a temporary agreement to cease military operations, but one that does not conclude the war decisively. 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. Defense experts say it's unlikely the counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year.

The US, UK and Germany have promised to send 10 rocket artillery systems, but Ukrainian advisers have called for 60 or even 300. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said in a morning update that the intense fighting meant combat units from both sides were “likely experiencing variable morale”, a rare acknowledgment of the pressures faced on both sides. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will throw in all the reserves they have … Because there are so many of them there already, they’re at critical mass,” Haidai told Ukrainian television. As a result, Russia essentially stopped flying fighter jets over Ukraine. 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. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force.

• For now, at least, Ukraine's allies are standing firmly beside it, saying they will support it "whatever it takes" while Russia too is "nowhere near giving up," Barrons said.









• A spate of Ukraine-linked attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure have reportedly led Moscow's energy ministry to propose restricting flights over energy facilities.









• Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly support aid for Ukraine, and most Republicans do as well.









• But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war.









• Germany’s minister for economic affairs and climate action, Robert Habeck, said coal-fired power plants would have to be used more as an emergency measure to offset falls in the supply of Russian gas.

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. 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 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.

• And many countries have fought on in what looked like desperate situations for a long time, because they could motivate the people and because they thought there was some chance of realistic victory, even a very small one.









• It would be wrong to say that the front lines in Ukraine are stalemated, but both sides are capable of fighting each other to a standstill as they each try to take strategic initiatives.









• Ukrainian armed forces started to show fierce resistance, thwarting a number of attacks and Russian aircrafts.









• But Joe Biden has given different signals at different times.









• More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels.









• It has also changed conscription laws, foreseeing the need to bolster its forces, which are dwarfed in size by Russia's but are more highly trained and equipped.