America has rallied military donations from more than 40 other countries. https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-would-happen-if-russia-nuked-ukraine.html has delivered artillery, but not the longer-range rocket systems that Ukraine is asking for. Wars often do not end predictably, and a failure to achieve hoped-for victories often leads to a sudden change of government. Ukraine appears very dependent on Volodymyr Zelenskiy in terms of its public diplomacy, but he does not direct its military strategy in detail and the country’s desire to fight runs very deep. The obvious strategy is to try to break the road and rail corridor linking Russia proper to occupied Crimea, so cutting off the peninsula from its hinterland, with an attack towards Melitopol or Berdansk. Combine that with another attack on the now repaired 12-mile (19km) Kerch Bridge to the Russian mainland and Crimea would be increasingly isolated and vulnerable.
- A month after the Russian invasion began, Zelensky put neutrality on the table, but it was too late.
- Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities see the continuing destruction of their country and conclude that political compromise might be better than such devastating loss of life.
- This would bear similarities to the situation after the initial Russian incursions into Ukraine in 2014 – but this time the west would be left facing an implacable, large hostile actor in Moscow.
The worry is that even this is overly optimistic, although it is the strategy that western leader appears to be selling to their publics. “There is a real problem here in that we may be over-encouraged by Ukraine’s early successes in counterattacking last year,” said James Nixey, a Russia expert at the Chatham House thinktank. However, it is hard to imagine Russia striking very far west, given the painfully slow advance around Bakhmut and the catastrophic attempt to capture Vuhledar.
When and how might the war in Ukraine end?
“The Ukrainians are negotiating with their Western partners as much as, and probably more than, they’re negotiating with the Russians,” says Olga Oliker of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank. Is Ukraine winning, because it saved Kyiv and pushed Russia back from Kharkiv; or is it losing, because Russia has taken Mariupol and may soon encircle Severodonetsk? The peace party worries that the longer the fighting goes on, the greater the human and economic cost to Ukraine and the rest of the world.
They have also created a patchy land corridor connecting Crimea to Russia for the first time since that area was taken in 2014. 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.
Europe
And there have been no shortage of predictions that the invasion will indeed prove Putin’s death knell. There’s no evidence, however, that the war has turned his country’s political and military elite against him or any sign of mass disaffection that could threaten the state. Still, Russia and Ukraine have now been fighting for more than three months. Both have suffered heavy losses and each knows that the war could drag on for years at a staggering cost without either achieving its aims. The Russian president does control additional chunks of Ukrainian territory, but he may hope to find some way of easing Western sanctions and also avoiding being wholly dependent on China. And bit by bit, Russia’s advantages—shorter supply lines, terrain better suited to armored warfare, and an overwhelming advantage in armaments, especially artillery—started paying off.
- The election is so obviously rigged that it is hard for outsider observers to take it seriously as a landmark date.
- 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.
- Russia’s allies like China – which has been a lukewarm friend to Putin in his war against Ukraine – have also been unable, or unwilling, to force him to the negotiating table.
- But another McCarthy concession — a procedure allowing 218 members to force a House floor vote on any bill — could present an opportunity for pro-Ukraine Republicans and Democrats to pass additional funding for Kyiv.
It's perhaps the only thing more complicated than sanctions enforcement, and this question touches on both. 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.
But the idea that Ukraine can be pressured into some kind of peace is “incorrect” and “denies Ukraine their agency”, said Branislav Slantchev, a professor of politics at the University of California, San Diego, and a specialist in war negotiations and how conflicts end. It has a homegrown war machine and enormous reserves of manpower and resources, and Morris believes there is a good chance Russia can sustain the conflict for years to come. Still, Western arms — even though supplied in an incremental, cautious manner — in Ukraine have similarly been key to halting Russian advances. In theory, that gives the West influence over the direction of the war. The West could — as Ukraine has sought — supply even more sophisticated weapons, faster, in the hope of convincing Russia that it cannot win.
- 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.
- The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, told the Senate in January the Biden administration still expects the $45 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in December to last through the end of this fiscal year.
- Some Ukrainian officials acknowledged the fear that gives Western leaders sleepless nights, that a public collapse of President Putin's regime might lead to real danger as his would-be successors jockey for power in a state with the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
- And bit by bit, Russia’s advantages—shorter supply lines, terrain better suited to armored warfare, and an overwhelming advantage in armaments, especially artillery—started paying off.