Western officials have been reluctant to characterize Russian efforts as effective. A top Pentagon official told reporters this week that while Moscow has tried to shatter the lines in eastern Ukraine, it has "not succeeded" in its efforts. Fortifying defenses, they added, will allow Ukraine to better maintain the front line and enable Kyiv to rotate troops and preserve critical ammunition.
- The Russian military all but openly recognized this reality in a late March briefing, in which top generals implausibly claimed they never intended to take Kyiv and were always focused on making territorial gains in the east.
- At first glance, the Koneva group's most recent polls from Russia continue to show broad public support for the war.
- Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse?
- He has spoken of the capture of this territory, which includes the cities of Mariupol and Melitopol, as a "significant result for Russia".
- Superior US Himars missiles helped turn the course of the war and German Leopard 2 tanks are promised, even if Western fighter jets are not.
- But far-fetched as they might sound, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of Britain’s army, believes it is time we dwelt on them more.
Ukraine was formerly part of the Soviet Union but declared its independence in 1991. And when it comes to Russian war casualties, Koneva said the losses have been successfully covered up by the country’s strict censorship measures. Even then, the support rate decreased by only a few percentage points, from 58% to 52%. The most popular responses, a third of all telegrams, were expressions of sympathy, support and "calls to be patient until Russia releases them," and a "reminder of the brotherhood of the two peoples." Koneva said that in June 2023, respondents were asked to send "virtual telegrams to ordinary Ukrainian citizens."
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Per Kofman, the Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” — meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area. Another part of it is corruption in the Russian procurement system. Graft in Russia is less a bug in its political system than a feature; one way the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-doesnt-anyone-help-ukraine.html is no exception to this pattern of widespread corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital supplies. From the outset, Russia’s decision to invade was hard to understand; it seemed at odds with what most experts saw as Russia’s strategic interests. As the war has progressed, the widely predicted Russian victory has failed to emerge as Ukrainian fighters have repeatedly fended off attacks from a vastly superior force.
This plan fell apart within the first 48 hours of the war when early operations like an airborne assault on the Hostomel airport ended in disaster, forcing Russian generals to develop a new strategy on the fly. What they came up with — massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). The Russians made some inroads into Ukrainian territory, especially in the south, where they have laid siege to Mariupol and taken Kherson and Melitopol.
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More commonly, there’s some kind of negotiated settlement — either a ceasefire or more permanent peace treaty — where the two sides agree to stop fighting under a set of mutually agreeable terms. Much as the Kremlin hasn’t struck NATO supply missions to Ukraine, the White House has flatly rejected a no-fly zone or any other kind of direct military intervention. China, by contrast, has been the most pro-Russia of the major global powers.
- Of course, that may be a strange example, but I just mean those of us who are against war still suffer from it.
- Volkov says these polls are conducted face-to-face, and people are assured of anonymity.
- Phillips P OBrien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, wrote in an analysis piece that the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House could see the US "neuter" the Western military alliance.
- And in a globalised world, many industries that are key in wartime rely on imports.
- While the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 – though effectively torn to shreds by Russia – was not formally revoked at the Summit, any self-restrictions which NATO took on as part of the agreement should now be considered null and void.
- At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union — the two great military powers in the world — engaged in a titanic ideological struggle by means of subversion, propaganda campaigns and proxy wars in the developing world.
Putin is seeking to turn back the clock to a time when the Soviet Union and the West had defined and relatively stable “spheres of influence” in Europe. During that time, there was a military balance achieved through parity in nuclear arsenals. If researchers exclude this group and also exclude the 20% of Russians who admit they oppose the war, that leaves about half of the country's population who researchers say support the war only at the "declarative level."
China is looking for a role in securing a political settlement, but its position is probably too close to Russia to be considered an honest broker. The UN human rights commissioner says at least 8,006 civilians have died and 13,287 have been wounded in 12 months of war, but the true number is likely to be substantially higher. BBC Russian has identified more than 15,000 Russian soldiers killed in the first year of war and suggests the most conservative estimate would be at least double that, with more than 100,000 others wounded or missing. He has spoken of the capture of this territory, which includes the cities of Mariupol and Melitopol, as a "significant result for Russia". The Sea of Azov, inside the Kerch Strait, "has become Russia's internal sea", he declared, pointing out that even Russian Tsar Peter the Great did not manage that.
- “Surveys don’t show what people think, but what they are ready to say, how they are prepared to carry themselves in public,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, the country’s premier independent polling and research organization, said.
- They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open roads.
- The majority of European countries turned to the tried and tested protective security umbrella of NATO, backed by American military capabilities.
Since then, very limited amounts of those currencies have been available and there is a cap on how many roubles you can withdraw. "When the operation in Donbas started I went to the ATM and withdrew the savings I had in Sberbank in dollars. Now I literally keep them under my pillow. Ilya (name changed), who is in his early 30s, has just finished paying off his mortgage in Moscow. "There are no dollars, no roubles - nothing! Well, there are roubles but I am not interested in them," said Anton (name changed), who is in his late 20s and was queuing at an ATM in Moscow. Over the weekend the central bank appealed for calm amid fears of a run on the banks, which happens when too many people try to withdraw money.
