Difference between revisions of "Ukraine war Countdown has begun to end of Putin say Kyiv officials"

Revision as of 20:20, 18 April 2024

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.

• A senior European Union official has denied member states are discussing financial coercion to force Hungary to agree on financing for Ukraine.









• 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.









• The former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has long been criticised for describing Germany's attempted annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing".









• 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.









• 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.









• American leadership has so far been largely united in their support for Kyiv.

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.

Invasion of Ukraine

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.

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." https://barlow-larsen.blogbright.net/jeff-glors-departure-from-cbs-news-exploring-the-reasons 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.

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However, what was not apparent to Russia until the fighting began is that the Ukrainian people are far more willing to fight than they anticipated. According to this approach, wars will end when the problem that caused the war is resolved by fighting on the battlefield. How long the fighting will last and the form it takes depends on the extent and type of the problem. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, I was easing my way into a new job and in the throes of the teaching year. I spend most of my day poring over multiple newspapers, magazines, blogs, and the Twitter feeds of various military mavens, a few of whom have been catapulted by the war from obscurity to a modicum of fame.

• To be sure, a lot happened in the intervening years that could have changed the direction of what followed.









• But many experts I turned to were not seriously concerned about such an outcome.









• It implicitly means continued backing for Kyiv, as a future in the EU for Ukraine would be impossible with a full-blown victory for Russia.

Instead, over the past year Ukrainian forces have consistently and successfully pushed back the invading troops. As long as there is no direct conflict between Russia and Nato then there is no reason for this crisis, bad as it is, to descend into a full-scale world war. They are feeling distinctly nervous that Russian forces might not stop at Ukraine and instead use some pretext to "come to the aid" of the ethnic Russian minorities in the Baltics and invade.

Almost three months on, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Russia has suffered a series of significant military setbacks that make any victory for them look a much more distant and difficult prospect – but a swift win for Ukraine doesn’t look likely either. As Ukrainian forces continued to hold off Russian advances on Kyiv, President Biden traveled to Brussels on Wednesday for an emergency meeting with other NATO leaders to discuss how to respond to Russia’s assault and help the 3 million Ukrainians who have fled the country.

• What comes next for Ukraine could be bleak, these experts say, with many expecting a long and drawn-out conflict, noting that even in the most positive scenario — that Russia withdraws its troops and Ukraine remains a sovereign nation — Europe is unlikely to return to the prewar status quo.









• In the meantime, NATO countries "would likely provide covert but very robust defensive assistance to the Ukrainian resistance."









• Ditto the devastation it continues to create in some of the world’s poorest countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen.









• The endgame would have to come from the gradual destruction of the Russian economy over a period of two or three years.









• Ukraine, say, accepts Russian sovereignty over Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

A Ukrainian victory means different things to different people. To some it 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.

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.

• Earlier this month, its civil defence minister told a defence conference "there could be a war in Sweden".









• Often hard to attribute, these could target banks, businesses, individuals and even critical national infrastructure.









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