Difference between revisions of "UkraineRussia war latest Hungary signals major shift in Ukraine funding stance Russia claims it has taken control of Kharkiv village"

Revision as of 23:20, 17 February 2024

During President Putin's marathon state address on Feb. 21, he accused Western countries of attempting "to deprive Russia of these historical territories that are now called Ukraine," making war the only way to "protect the people in our historical lands." 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. Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly support aid for Ukraine, and most Republicans do as well. "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.

• Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine.









• Conscription requires young men and women to serve for a limited time in uniform.









• Third, since there are not free and fair elections, there is no way other than mass mobilisation and revolution for the Russian people to overthrow Putin.









• The US inflation rate, at 8.6 percent last month, is the highest in 40 years, while the Congressional Budget Office has revised estimates of economic growth—3.1 percent this year— down to 2.2 percent for 2023 and 1.5 percent for 2024.









• What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle.

Emory University’s Reiter listed two main reasons for the lack of appetite in Ukraine for any negotiations that would mean accepting the loss of territory. “The war has been so absolutely brutal that they’re fearful of what will happen in territories handed over to Russia,” he said. Unlike in the case of Serbia, experts do not foresee a scenario in which the US-led Western alliance would actively attack Russia. Despite Ukraine’s gains against Russia, experts believe a frozen conflict or painful truce is most likely. While the deal is essential for Ukraine’s economy, it is also beneficial for Russia – so it’s not simply an olive branch from the Kremlin.

Why is the Russian air force not more involved in the war? I rarely see any news regarding Russian strikes from the air. — Matt

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. Most ominously, its troops began encircling a large portion of Ukraine’s battle-tested, best-trained forces in Donbas where besieged towns like Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Lyman, and Popasna suddenly hit the headlines. Still, the botched northern campaign and the serial failures of a military that had been infused with vast sums of money and supposedly subjected to widespread modernization and reform was stunning.

• But even if this occurs, that doesn’t mean the war itself will end with Putin’s downfall.









• "But if Central/Eastern Europe felt abandoned by those powers, it's not hard to imagine a Polish or even a Ukrainian nuclear programme."









• Shortly before Russia invaded last February, less than a third of Ukrainians supported foreign boots on the ground in Ukraine.









• But polls show that does not equal pacifism, with the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supporting a prolonged defensive war.

A Ukrainian victory means different things to different people. To https://rentry.co/9gktmtve is pushing Russia back to the territories it controlled before the start of the invasion; for others it’s about pushing it back to the pre-2014 borders, before Russia annexed Crimea. On the one hand, the Russian invasion has “essentially stalled,” in the words of U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and has so far failed to fulfill any of President Vladimir Putin’s major objectives. But on the other, having lost more than 7,000 of his troops, according to the U.S. government, Putin may decide to escalate his bombing campaign, which has already left parts of Ukraine in ruin and, at a conservative estimate, more than 900 civilians dead.

About Sky News

A prominent war expert says the US is on the verge of lessening its support for, or even withdrawing from, NATO - with potentially catastrophic consequences for Europe. "The document referred to in the Financial Times article is a background note written by the secretariat of the council under its own responsibility which describes the current status of the Hungarian economy," the statement by the senior EU official said. A senior European Union official has denied member states are discussing financial coercion to force Hungary to agree on financing for Ukraine. Instead, he argued, there could be more “hybrid strikes” or “hybrid cyber-attacks” outside of Ukraine. But as the fighting goes on, that idea is progressively seeming less likely, despite what Droin calls “miscalculations,” such as a missile hitting Poland in November.

Ukraine's defensive forces transform into an effective insurgency, well-motivated and supported by local populations. And then, perhaps after many years, with maybe new leadership in Moscow, Russian forces eventually leave Ukraine, bowed and bloodied, just as their predecessors left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade fighting Islamist insurgents. Earlier this month, its civil defence minister told a defence conference "there could be a war in Sweden".

How will Russia's war with Ukraine end? Here are 5 possible outcomes

The news from the battlefield, the diplomatic noises off, the emotion of the grieving and displaced; all of this can be overwhelming. So let us step back for a moment and consider how the conflict in Ukraine might play out. What are some of the possible scenarios that politicians and military planners are examining? Few can predict the future with confidence, but here are some potential outcomes.

I spoke to Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding in Ukraine about the current situation and what to expect from the coming months. Beyond the obvious dangers of a nuclear plant being shelled, there is also anxiety that Russia is trying to connect the facility to the grid in Crimea. If this happens, it’ll be the first time that one country has stolen a nuclear reactor from another. The war has already become very costly for the oligarchs and these costs will only increase with time. When a sufficient number of Putin’s coalition privately turn against the war, this will pressure Putin to end the war or risk his position of power.

Ukraine, say, accepts Russian sovereignty over Crimea and parts of the Donbas. In turn, Putin accepts Ukrainian independence and its right to deepen ties with Europe. But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict. Perhaps more likely is that this develops into a protracted war.

Most U.S. training takes place at U.S. military bases in Germany. Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. 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." The U.S. Congress approved four separate spending bills for Ukraine in the past year totaling $112 billion. The rest is funding the Ukrainian government (this helps pay the salaries of Ukrainian government workers) and humanitarian aid to help the millions of Ukrainians who have been driven from their homes.

• What are some of the possible scenarios that politicians and military planners are examining?









• If he was, perhaps, facing defeat in Ukraine, he might be tempted to escalate further.









• At this point, Russia could call for a ceasefire to retain what it has, and run a defensive campaign to consolidate its battered military.









• Almost three months on, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.









• In explaining why, Reiter pointed to “the heavy diplomatic costs of [Russia] using nuclear weapons, the lack of military utility of using nuclear weapons,” and the risk that such use would “increase NATO military involvement” in the war.

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.