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But the uncertainty surrounding President Putin and his regime, almost a year and a half into a disastrous war and after the Wagner drama, might feed the anxiety of those Nato countries who would prefer the war to end around the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. Senior Ukrainians are still doing their best to manage expectations about the summer offensive. They believe some of their Western allies, as well as supporters in the media, have become over-excited about Ukraine's army and its Nato equipment. Mykhailo Podolyak, another close adviser to President Zelensky, agreed there were "several groups of people who want to take power in Russia". 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". Other senior officials in Kyiv say they are convinced that Mr Putin is opposed by informal but organised networks of disenchanted insiders.

• For its part, the Biden administration has started deliberations around the thorny question of whether helping Ukraine should entail retaking Crimea, which Russia seized and then annexed in 2014.









• Over 10 million have been forced to flee their homes, including over 6.3 million who have sought refuge outside Ukraine.









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









• Resistance has already begun, with a nationwide call-up of men of fighting age and 18,000 automatic weapons being handed out to the citizens of Kyiv, in addition to the uniformed army and reserves who are already putting up stiff resistance.

The war in Ukraine conjures up a strong sense of historical déjà vu. Though recorded in 21st-century fashion through up-close-and-personal shots from mobile phone cameras and high-definition drone footage, the images being captured – of artillery duels and trench warfare – have a distinctly last-century feel to them. Despite Ukraine’s gains against Russia, experts believe a frozen conflict or painful truce is most likely.

BBC News Services

Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end. Without a critical mass of support, resistance to the Russian military will fall apart and Ukraine will lose the war. The fierce determination of the Ukrainian people up to this point suggests that this will not occur any time soon.

That, in turn, could pressure Putin to strike a peace deal or even bring about new Russian leadership, Herbst told me. Senior officials from around 40 countries, including China, and India, held talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the weekend with the aim of agreeing on key principles that could underline a future settlement of the war. So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control. “You end up with something between a frozen conflict and an everlasting war, in which neither side has the energy or economy to win,” Nixey said. 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. Wars require the tacit approval and support of those on the home front.

Elsewhere on the BBC

By October 2022, the picture had changed dramatically and having failed to take Kyiv, Russia withdrew completely from the north. Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance. Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv. The Ukrainian General Staff says settlements in the area - including Klishchiivka and Andriivka - are continuing to come under artillery and mortar fire. Perhaps most significant is the activity around Avdiivka, a strategically important town on the front line in eastern Ukraine. The village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region could offer a similar stepping stone but Russian forces are reported to have made some advances in the area.

• And while we have no right to tell Ukrainians to stop fighting before their country is whole, we also have no right to expect them to keep fighting at any cost.









• It is clear to the most dispassionate observer of the war that Ukraine is having to fight very hard, and take casualties in troops and equipment, including the armour supplied by Nato.









• So my self-assessment question is not whether my predictions are right, because I made few that were firm, but whether much happened that would surprise a regular reader of these posts.









• That scenario, of a Russian military incursion into a Nato country, almost unthinkable until recently, is when Nato and Russia could indeed be at war with each other.









• They believe some of their Western allies, as well as supporters in the media, have become over-excited about Ukraine's army and its Nato equipment.

Politically, the worry is that Putin won’t go near a negotiation until he sees who the next U.S. president is. A shift to defense could buy Ukraine the time it needs to eventually force Putin into an acceptable compromise. “It’s very likely that going to a defensive posture would allow the Ukrainians to conserve resources while making future Russian progress look unlikely,” said Anthony Pfaff, an intelligence expert at the U.S. Army War College who co-authored a study that anticipated Putin’s Ukraine invasion years before it happened. But many experts I turned to were not seriously concerned about such an outcome. The United States might have to push to reform outdated elements of the world’s security architecture, such as the UN Security Council, so that they no longer reflect a bygone era in which a small group of big powers got to determine the course of international affairs.

One is the motivation, determination and courage of the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian nation as a whole, which is unprecedented in modern war history. Ukraine will win by restoring completely its territorial integrity by spring 2023 at the latest. Crossing over to the east side of the Dnipro river to pressure Russia's vulnerable road and rail links into Crimea might be too demanding. But the possibility of Kyiv launching a surprise new offensive can never be ruled out. Those who seek to invade another country anywhere across the great Eurasian steppes are condemned eventually to winter in it.

Still, Biden faces political peril if the war goes badly for the Ukrainians. Even if Republicans on the Hill are mainly responsible for holding up military aid, that won’t help Biden much politically if Putin starts to regain the battlefield advantage next year, after the nearly $100 billion Biden’s already put into stopping Russia. For most of the conflict GOP critics have accused Biden of moving too slowly to arm the Ukrainians with the most sophisticated weaponry, such as M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, long-range precision artillery and F-16 fighter jets. In an interview in July Zelenskyy himself said the delays “provided Russia with time to mine all our lands and build several lines of defense.” The ongoing Ukraine crisis also resurrects Trump’s old critique of NATO and the underspending Europeans.

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 https://barlow-larsen.blogbright.net/weather-forecast-for-newport-news-virginia 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.

• Yet six months on Putin does not give the appearance of having suffered long-term harm.









• Despite Ukraine’s gains against Russia, experts believe a frozen conflict or painful truce is most likely.









• "His political life is not finished. He won't stay in exile in Belarus."









• But what Snyder envisions is Putin prioritizing his political survival in Russia over his personal and ideological designs on Ukraine, not necessarily Putin’s removal from power.









• Putin would ideally like to see the Zelensky government quickly capitulate and surrender, to be replaced by a Moscow-leaning puppet government.

This is because they have stuck with the UN Charter which precludes the sort of territorial annexations expected by Putin. There have been much publicised problems with the next large tranches of EU and US support. The problem with the EU lies with Hungary’s veto of any funds to Ukraine, but either this will soon be overcome or, even if not, there are workarounds that will lead eventually to the desired result. The problem in the US reflects Republican efforts to tie support for overseas causes to action to stop immigrants coming in from Mexico. There is enough money left for one more military aid package, but then it depends on a new deal.

• Though recorded in 21st-century fashion through up-close-and-personal shots from mobile phone cameras and high-definition drone footage, the images being captured – of artillery duels and trench warfare – have a distinctly last-century feel to them.









• The Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes.









• That, in turn, could pressure Putin to strike a peace deal or even bring about new Russian leadership, Herbst told me.









• But even if the offensive had made more progress it would have been a tall order to put the Russians sufficiently in a corner that their choice was only between battlefield humiliation and a negotiated withdrawal.









• The effectiveness of the drone and missile attacks on Ukraine can be judged.









• Ukraine, meanwhile, would need years of western support to ensure its eastern border remains stable.

Instead Commander-in-Chief Valery Gerasimov took over direct responsibility for the Russian campaign. The Russian offensives at the start of the year were unimpressive with crude and unimaginative tactics. Little progress was made, and then at high cost, with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group to the fore in Soledar and Bakhmut. The current war is different, with Western support helping Ukraine regain large parts of the territory Russia grabbed in the early weeks after last year’s invasion.