RussiaUkraine Can a solution be found for war in Ukraines east

Despite Ukraine’s gains against Russia, experts believe a frozen conflict or painful truce is most likely. It’s crucial to explore every option to end this war right now by envisaging a scenario that allows both sides to avoid feeling humiliated. Here, the US had some leverage over the parties, which allowed the chief mediator, Richard Holbrooke, to adopt the “Big Bang approach” in which all parties are locked in a room – in this case the Wright-Patterson air force base in Dayton – until they reach an agreement.

So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control. “You end up with something between a frozen conflict and an everlasting war, in which neither side has the energy or economy to win,” Nixey said. The hope is that such a display of military strength might then force Russia to the negotiating table, but Vladimir Putin’s bellicose speech this week hardly suggests a leader willing to compromise soon. In reality, if Ukraine is going to force Russia from all its occupied territory, it is likely to take several more offensives, many months at least, and a dramatic change in Kremlin thinking. Ukrainian armed forces operating in the region denied they had carried out the strike, stating that they "did not conduct any combat operations with means of destruction." The Russian side has not responded to the BBC's queries but earlier this year Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned there would be "slaughter" if Ukraine were allowed to regain control of eastern Ukraine, including the border, before local elections were held.

Russia’s Putin says ‘obvious’ Ukraine shot down plane over Belgorod

Russia is keeping those fighter jets grounded for now and is attacking with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war. Still, it’s an open question whether the U.S. will be able to indefinitely continue its current level of support, said Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior adviser who has studied the volumes of artillery used in the war. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive - some of each could combine to produce different outcomes. And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place. Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region.

Russia has begun a large-scale military attack on Ukraine, its southern neighbour, on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is a tendency to confuse Western consensus with global consensus, but we should face the reality of a multipolar world. This nascent grouping may evolve into a new nonaligned bloc or network, further fragmenting the global system. Moreover, many of these nations have economic or arms-supply ties to Russia and major trade and investment ties to China. If https://anotepad.com/notes/72xe6b87 is prologue, they are likely to play the West and a Sino-Russian pole against each other for advantage, depending on the issue. The crisis over Ukraine has presented the United States with a complex brew of challenges and opportunities.

World condemns Putin

Ukraine is assembling a force of more than 100 western Leopard 1 and 2 tanks, plus others, and a similar number of armoured vehicles that it hopes to use whenever the spring muddy season eases, to smash through Russia’s defensive lines in a D-day offensive. Some Ukrainian experts fear a pincer movement to encircle Donbas and the east from Sumy in the north and Velyka Novosilka in the south, allowing Russia to occupy most of the four Ukrainian provinces it has unilaterally claimed to have annexed. At this point, Russia could call for a ceasefire to retain what it has, and run a defensive campaign to consolidate its battered military. Ukraine’s war reaches the one-year mark with no immediate end in sight.

The scenarios above illustrate the various ways geopolitics could be transformed depending on what trajectory the conflict over Ukraine takes next. But in several respects the geopolitical chess pieces are already in different positions on the board than they were before hostilities erupted. Countries on the EU's (and NATO's) eastern flank like Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, all of which have seen their NATO deployments bolstered in recent weeks, are extremely nervous about the potential for the conflict to spill over into their own territories. In this scenario, the strategists noted, Russia would realize it has "once again fought an unwinnable war, the proverbial quagmire that has trapped many powerful states through history." Other analysts warn of a "quagmire" — where there is no easy solution for what would likely be a heavily destroyed Ukraine, or for Russia — if an insurgency continued long term. There's of course the possibility that a Ukrainian fightback doesn't pose a significant challenge to Russian forces that remain in Ukraine — after all, thousands of fighters are civilians who taken up arms and have been hastily trained.

By early summer Ukraine will be able to use US-made F16 fighter jets for the first time, which it hopes will improve its ability to counter Russian aircraft and strengthen its own air defences. Russia lacks a decisive, breakthrough capability to overrun Ukraine and will do what it can to hold on to what it currently occupies, using the time to strengthen its defences while it hopes for the West to lose the will to continue supporting Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the return of major war to the European continent. The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too. In an interview with the U.K.'s Channel 4 News that aired Friday, Zelenskyy invited the former president and front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination to visit Kyiv, but only if Trump delivers on his promise. Reuters could not confirm that the fire resulted from a Ukrainian drone attack.

• And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place.









• A spate of Ukraine-linked attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure have reportedly led Moscow's energy ministry to propose restricting flights over energy facilities.









• Blumenthal has joined other lawmakers — particularly pro-Ukraine Republicans — in pushing President Joe Biden to give Zelenskyy most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft.









• Meanwhile, sanctions on Russia would remain; its economic and military strength would continue to erode; and Putin could only watch as his frozen assets abroad are drawn down to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.









• 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.