When will the war in Ukraine end And 9 more questions about Russias invasion NPR

Ukrainian forces have adopted a more defensive stance as circumstances dictate; a senior army general warned last week that front-line Ukrainian troops face artillery shortages and have scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance. Weather conditions are deteriorating in Ukraine, with mud, freezing rain, snow and ice making offensive and reconnaissance operations challenging. Intense fighting continues nonetheless, and particularly around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces are conducting offensive operations and have made some recent, confirmed advances. Hein Goemans Going back to the analogy of the first world war one more time, what really changed attitudes in Germany was the collapse of Bulgaria and Austro-Hungary suing for peace.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine alongside advanced Gray Eagle and Reaper drones. “Everything I have come to learn about the will and determination of the Ukrainians leads me to conclude retaking Crimea is within reach, and they need the artillery that will enable hitting targets — the sites of missiles destroying infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said. The challenge now is training and equipping an armored force big enough and sophisticated enough to envelop Russia’s fighting force. “I would love to think the kinetic phase could end in 2023, but I suspect we could be looking at another three years with this scale of fighting,” Roberts said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in maps — latest updates

Russian officials often criticise Nato military support for Ukraine and in an interview last week with the BBC the country's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, cited the prospect of Ukraine joining the Western alliance as a reason for the invasion in the first place. While Ukraine’s location has afforded it outsize attention relative to other conflicts, it’s also what makes the prospect of a drawn-out war even more likely. Ukraine, after all, is situated at the doorstep of the European Union and NATO, both of which have a vested interest in ensuring that the country’s sovereignty is maintained and that Russia’s aggression is curtailed. The longer the Russian invasion continues, the greater the refugee crisis that Europe is likely to face, and the riskier the situation becomes for NATO, which has gone to great lengths to avoid being drawn into direct conflict with Russian troops.

• It's perhaps the only thing more complicated than sanctions enforcement, and this question touches on both.









• The following day, Italy's Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, speaking at the White House, said people in Europe wanted "to think about the possibility of bringing a ceasefire and starting again some credible negotiations".









• Twenty million Soviets — Russians, Ukrainians and others — died fighting Hitler's armies.









• Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured.

Volker said that aid packages must include more advanced weaponry for Ukraine, however, like F-16 fighter jets which have been pledged by Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. "Russia can win the war, or the Ukrainians can win the war. And, as you're seeing things now, if you really think about it, what has been achieved this year? Very little has been achieved by Russia, and you can say the same thing for the Ukrainians," he said. It didn't, and the prospect of a breakthrough in 2024 is also unlikely, military experts and defense analysts told CNBC. At the start of 2023, hopes were high that a much-vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive — expected to be launched in the spring — would change the dial in the war against Russia.

Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. 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. “Either Ukraine keeps fighting with sustained Western support and eventually forces Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine entirely, with the possible exception of Crimea,” he said, referring to the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. He noted, however that this would pre-suppose a Russian military collapse and a change in the country’s leadership – something that could take “a long time to achieve and would necessitate considerably greater military capabilities” than Ukraine currently possesses.

• Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.









• Hein Goemans Well, some people would say yes, because it makes clear that this is a war caused by a commitment problem that no peace deal will stick.









• Defense experts say it's unlikely the counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year.









• Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles.









• They can actually, you know, try to recreate trench warfare if they want to.

This Swedish Air Force handout image from March 2, 2022, shows Russian fighter jets violating Swedish airspace east of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland. Ukraine's air defenses have been surprisingly effective against Russia's air force. This is a grinding trench and artillery war of attrition. https://squareblogs.net/racingden14/discovering-rob-nelsons-origin-on-world-news-now has been a disaster for President Vladimir Putin and in order to justify it at home he at least has to take control of Ukraine's Donbas region, after which he can falsely claim that the army saved Russian citizens persecuted by Ukraine.

When will Ukraine war end? How Putin could be stopped and timeline of Russia’s invasion

Russia also intensified its bombing of cities on Tuesday, including in civilian areas. Footage "of the aftermath of a missile strike that hit Kyiv's main TV tower and a nearby Holocaust memorial showed a gruesome scene of blown-out cars and buildings and several bodies on fire," The Washington Post reports. The southern city of Mariupol suffered 15 hours of relentless shelling, while missiles also bombarded Kharkiv, allowing paratroopers to land in the eastern Ukrainian city. At 3am (UTC) President Vladimir Putin authorised a “special military operation” with troops entering the country from the north, east and south at 5am. Last Sunday, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces be put on high alert, after the West imposed a number of crippling sanctions and which he described as taking “unfriendly” steps against his country. Ukrainian armed forces have fought back with fierce resistance, with Russia failing to take key cities within the first week of its invasion and remove President Volodymyr Zelensky.

One concern is it could yet extend to other post-Soviet countries such as Moldova and Georgia, both of which, like Ukraine, have Russian-backed breakaway regions within their respective territories. The other, perhaps greater, risk is that Russian aggression could spread even farther afield, to the Baltics, which would not only draw NATO into a potential conflict, but also fundamentally threaten the post–Cold War order. One reason that countries such as Germany have been reluctant to send heavier weapons to the Ukrainians is that Berlin does not want to give Putin any pretext for escalation. Just ask Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose improbable assassination in Sarajevo sparked World War I.