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

"You only have to look at the struggle to get the oil embargo," says Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, referring to the tortured weeks of negotiation that resulted in this week's partial EU embargo on Russian oil. Nearly a year later, Russia’s army is no closer to winning the war — and has even lost part of the territory that Putin attempted to annex last September. Russia and Ukraine agreed on the need for humanitarian corridors to deliver aid and help civilians exit besieged Ukrainian cities, marking the first sign of progress since the conflict began. President Zelensky issued a plea to make Ukraine a member of the European Union, whilst the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol were encircled by Russian forces.

• Cases of whole Russian units refusing orders and armed standoffs between officers and their troops continue to occur,” the ministry said on Twitter.









• Russia and Ukraine agreed on the need for humanitarian corridors to deliver aid and help civilians exit besieged Ukrainian cities, marking the first sign of progress since the conflict began.









• What it will take is for the Russians to realise, for the Russian people, that they can’t win this war.

And in a stark warning, the newly appointed head of the British Army said the UK and allies needed to be capable of winning a ground war with Russia. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the costs of war were high, but the price of letting Moscow achieve its military goals was even greater. The West must prepare to continue supporting Ukraine in a war lasting for years, Nato's chief has warned. 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. Bringing back coal-fired power plants was “painful, but it is a sheer necessity”, he said.

Ukraine war could last for years, warns Nato chief

Russia has also made advances north east of Kupiansk, north of Bakhmut, and south west of Avdiivka, according to the latest ISW assessment. The ISW does note that Russia's advances might be the result of Ukrainian forces withdrawing to "more defensible positions" near Robotyne. 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.

• Just ask Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose improbable assassination in Sarajevo sparked World War I.









• If it runs out, then Russia could unleash its fighting planes.









• So he’s the linchpin of the regime and the question is, does Putin have the repressive apparatus of a Saddam Hussein who basically killed the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south when he lost the Gulf War?









• All these measures were approved when both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats.









• But the people are doing the fighting and the dying, and whose interests are most directly at stake are the Ukrainians.

Putin denied a second wave of mobilization was necessary for now, but in early December he signed a decree ordering the military to increase the number of Russian armed forces personnel by 170,000, bringing the total number of troops to 1.32 million. https://anotepad.com/notes/ifq2nqwf has shown that it is committed to a long conflict in Ukraine and that it has the capacity to send hundreds of thousands of men to war. Putin claimed in his end-of year news conference that 617,000 troops were currently active in Ukraine. Another year of war in Europe has undoubtedly drained Western military resources and the political appetite to maintain massive amounts of military aid for Ukraine.

Hein Goemans Well, as you say, they have the manpower base, so they can do a mobilisation. They had something like 15,000 tanks and now 2,000 of them are kind of gone now, but they can patch together another two, 3,000 tanks if they want to. And they get plenty of ammunition from the North Koreans or elsewhere. They can actually, you know, try to recreate trench warfare if they want to. 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. There has to be some notion that he says this is gonna be too costly.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

After liberating a handful of villages in the summer, Ukrainian and Russian forces have been caught in largely attritional battles, with neither side making significant gains. The second thing to keep in mind here is that you must believe that any deal you make will stick, so there won’t be drastic changes in the future which will give one side an advantage and they will renege on the deal. The thing that is striking is that there is a cap on Ukrainian aims.

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. Recent assessments by the ISW show Russian forces have made advances north of Bakhmut. However, the ISW says Russia has made confirmed advances near the town and notes that several Russian sources claim its forces are trying to push Ukrainian troops out of positions in the Avdiivka Coke Plant, which occupies a key tactical position.

The prospects for an end of the war in Ukraine remain bleak. Compared with this time last year, Vladimir Putin is stronger, politically more than militarily. President Volodomyr Zelensky has admitted his country's spring offensive has not been the success he hoped. The situation in Ukraine is often fast moving and it is likely there will be times when there have been changes not reflected in the maps. By October 2022, the picture had changed dramatically and having failed to take Kyiv, Russia withdrew completely from the north.

Cases of whole Russian units refusing orders and armed standoffs between officers and their troops continue to occur,” the ministry said on Twitter. But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war. That said, there wasn't much of a political will for third countries to sanction Cuba at the time. It's possible today's situation with Russia might make such a policy more politically palatable if the U.S. attempted it again, though I can't find any serious proposal in the government to do just that.

Everybody in Britain knows that it started in 1914 and ended in 1918. But one of the interesting things is that in November 1914, there was a Crown Council in Germany with the chancellor, with the Kaiser, William the Last, as I like to refer to him, and the chief of staff where they all agreed they can’t win. What happened there is that they had the Schlieffen Plan.

• With both Ukraine and Russia investing heavily in the war, it's unlikely there will be any negotiations to end the conflict or agree to a cease-fire.









• I mean, in my opinion, if he gives up Crimea, it will cost him his personal safety, you know, maybe his life, and he may be thrown in jail.









• One key question that could determine the war’s end game is how long Ukraine’s backers can keep up their arms donations to Kyiv.









• As the war enters its second year, the spigot of military aid is still gushing.









• More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve.

Then, only then did the German people find out that the war was lost because Ludendorff had set up a Ministry of Information saying, “We’re gonna win, we’re doing great. We’re gonna win, we’re going to win.” And finally, reality and truth hit him smack in the face that they couldn’t win and they wouldn’t win. What it will take is for the Russians to realise, for the Russian people, that they can’t win this war. There can be a revolt against Putin, which we think is unlikely.

If conflicts in places such as Ethiopia, Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, and Yemen have proved anything, it’s that wars are easy to start, but are also brutal, intractable, and difficult to end. The fickle nature of the international media means that protracted conflicts quickly lose the world’s attention, if they ever had it to begin with. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the south-western frontline at Mykolaiv and the nearby city of Odesa on Saturday.

I mean, they are willing and Putin is certainly not stupid either. But he says basically if this doesn’t work, try something else. I mean, there’s rumour now that he’s trying to force the Russians to have another go in Kyiv and the military is saying we can’t do that and we don’t wanna do it but Putin is insisting he is just trying different strategies. This is why Wagner is allowed to do this horrible thing with the prisoners. Hein Goemans Let me start with a very basic kind of introduction to the topic. There is a war because both sides ask more than the other’s willing to give.