Ukraine-war-could-last-for-years-warns-Nato-chief-s

The United States, as Ukraine’s most important military supporter, remains the center of gravity when it comes to an eventual outcome for the conflict. American leadership has so far been largely united in their support for Kyiv. “Even technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they’re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves — just people rushing across the field getting shot at,” Jensen said. As the war enters its second year, the spigot of military aid is still gushing. But industrial capacities are spotty, and nations have started to scrutinize how much equipment they can spare while maintaining their own self-defense requirements and that of NATO.

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• Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region.









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









• 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.









• Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine alongside advanced Gray Eagle and Reaper drones.









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

And at some moments they came very close to winning, right? So it’s a somewhat naive perspective because I think that Russia has plenty of hardware and mobilisation potential to keep fighting for a long time. The question is, do the Russians think that they still have a chance to score the necessary victory? So, I mean, if they push back the Russians all the way to the 1991 borders, the Ukrainians are gonna say, “We’re willing to settle,” and it would be genuine. I don’t see why the Russians would ever accept it, to repeat myself. I mean, Putin may be removed, but then there will be a more hawkish leader who’ll replace him.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in maps — latest updates

"We want peace around the world," 70-year-old Kyiv resident Nina Albul recently told my colleague Hanna Palamarenko, "but we also want the world to know that it's okay for enslaved people to fight back." According to a poll by the independent Razumkov Centre, a majority of Ukrainians said they believe Ukraine is "heading in the right direction" in light of the war. This includes overwhelming domestic support for joining NATO and the European Union, despite both blocs expressing hesitation to Ukraine's membership for decades preceding the war.

• You have to defeat decisively the Russians in Ukraine to push them back.









• On February 24, Russia launched a military invasion on Ukraine.









• There’s no way they’re gonna push back Russia to the 1991 borders and they may have to accept the four annexed areas as part of Russia forever.

But polls show that does not equal pacifism, with the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supporting a prolonged defensive war. Ukraine expert Terrell Jermaine Starr recently told me, "every step that Ukrainians took towards Europe came as a direct result of Russian aggression." I've also met displaced Ukrainians who have re-started their businesses in European countries, mostly Poland. Those who spoke foreign languages, especially English, have had even more job options. Ukrainians who settled in neighboring Poland have learned Polish, which has some similarities to Ukrainian. Many have continued their careers, working in tech, education or manufacturing here.

Putinology: the art of analyzing the man in the Kremlin

Now the U.S. and European militaries are training Ukrainian forces in Europe. Most U.S. training takes place at U.S. military bases in Germany. And even though the fall of the Soviet Union was notable for its lack of bloodshed, many in Ukraine refer to today's conflict as a true "war of independence." All these measures were approved when both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats. Some Republicans are saying the U.S. should stop funding Ukraine.

After Mr Macron and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held an 80-minute phone call with Mr Putin on Saturday, aimed at exploring ways to enable Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, Latvia's deputy prime minister lashed out on social media. But despite https://ambitious-camel-g3r4ks.mystrikingly.com/blog/russia-s-wanton-destruction-against-ukraine-must-be-stopped-uk-statement-to-5093af3b-03b3-4321-aaa8-786efb413469 of Russia’s forces and the years-long quagmire its economy faces, Putin has shown no indication he intends to scale back his goals or seek a way out of the war, insisting Russia’s victory is “inevitable” and its “goals will be met in full”. When he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s original plan envisioned Russian forces capturing Kyiv within as little as three days. Russian troops took control of Kherson, a city of 280,000 people. Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker told CNBC he believes American and EU aid packages for Ukraine will be approved come January, saying he believed this funding would tide Ukraine over for another year, militarily.

"The U.K. foreign secretary estimated it would be a 10-year war. Lawmakers at the Capitol were told Monday it is likely to last 10, 15, or 20 years — and that ultimately, Russia will lose." Despite Moscow's "shambolic start to its military campaign, most Western officials and analysts believe Russia will turn to criminal siege tactics and eventually find a way to break through Ukraine's fierce and valiant resistance," Politico's Alex Ward writes. A U.S. official tells CBS News that Russia could tactically seize Kyiv and Ukraine in four to six weeks. This week's American and German promises to supply advanced multiple rocket artillery and air defence and radar systems will certainly have gone some way towards meeting the urgent demands of hard-pressed Ukrainian commanders. Any notion that the EU will move swiftly on to Russian gas has already been dispelled.

Maybe Russian forces get bogged down, hampered by low morale, poor logistics and inept leadership. Maybe it takes longer for Russian forces to secure cities like Kyiv whose defenders fight from street to street. The fighting has echoes of Russia's long and brutal struggle in the 1990s to seize and largely destroy Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

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









• 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.









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









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

Moreover, such a scenario would not be politically justifiable for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That would make him the president who not only lost the war but also large parts of his country. Emily Harding, a former National Security Council staffer, warned Tuesday that the U.S. and Europe should prepare for 8-10 years of economically disruptive conflict in Ukraine, Roll Call reports. If the U.S. sticks with Ukraine and supports its shadow war, "Russian casualties will be through the roof," former CIA Afghanistan operations chief Michael Vickers told the same CSIS audience. "This could be an insurgency that is bigger than our Afghan one in the 1980s in terms of things we could provide them that would really hurt Russia." Still, "given the durability of the Ukrainian resistance and its long history of pushing Russia back, the U.S. and Western powers do not believe that this will be a short war," CBS News reports.

• 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.









• Ukrainian military officials have conceded that hopes and expectations of a great breakthrough in the counteroffensive were not met.









• So that’s the only strategy that I can see Putin really using nuclear weapons.









• For the last few months Russian and Ukrainian forces have battled for control of territory in the country's east - with Moscow making slow advances in recent weeks.









• Most analysts doubt this means their use is likely or imminent.









• But this turns sour and enough members of Russia's military, political and economic elite turn against him.

So there is no incentive or there’s no even belief or need or just there would be no sanity in the idea of decisively defeating Russia inside Russia. You have to defeat decisively the Russians in Ukraine to push them back. They want to take over entire Ukraine and perhaps even, being realistic about this, subsequently in Moldova and other parts of the former Russian empire, whether we’d be the Czarist or the Communist one. Hein Goemans So I study war because it’s terrible, and because it’s truly terrible. I was raised, you know, in the Netherlands and with family members who had fought and who had died in the second world war in the camps and, you know, and elsewhere.