Difference between revisions of "How Does the War in Ukraine End"

Revision as of 22:36, 11 February 2024

As of this writing, the superforecasters had assigned a roughly 70 percent probability to the scenario of Russia and Ukraine not agreeing to end the conflict before October 1, 2024, the furthest-out date among the multiple-choice options presented. When the superforecasters were asked to name the year in which they expected Russia’s war against Ukraine to end, the median answer was 2025, with a minimum of 2024 and a maximum of 2037. There are no certain answers to my questions, just ones contingent on unknowable future circumstances. To put a twist on an old Yiddish expression, people predict, and war laughs. At some point, Ukraine will have to decide if there's a military solution to the conflict or if it has to look for another way out without conceding any kind of defeat, Barrons said.

But what Snyder envisions is Putin prioritizing his political survival in Russia over his personal and ideological designs on Ukraine, not necessarily Putin’s removal from power. In the United States, he noted, everything from industrial policy to diplomatic and military strategy to domestic politics similarly will need to be refashioned for this new conflict. “One may imagine something like the outcome of the Korean War,” with “the warring sides remaining not reconciled and irreconcilable, always on alert, but more or less securely divided,” Lipman told me. Still, she said, whatever border is drawn between Russia and Ukraine is likely to be far longer and harder to secure than the one dividing the Korean peninsula.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

Russia has shown zero interest in making concessions that would come close to the minimal requirements of Ukraine and its allies. As long as his military avoids total collapse, and he believes there is a chance of political change in the West, Putin will likely keep sacrificing Russians to stay in the fight. One problem, of course, is that Putin understands these stakes all too well — especially given the surging poll numbers for Trump, who has suggested both that he’d swiftly cut a deal with Russia over Ukraine and order the U.S. to depart from, or at least downgrade, NATO. Militarily, the biggest concern may be that Putin could go on the offensive in the spring with major air support that he’s avoided until now but could deploy as Ukraine runs low on defensive missiles.

• This means that the willingness of the general population to suffer in the face of high costs is of the utmost importance.









• In practice the problem was that the Ukrainians had been encouraged to embrace a western manoeuvre concept but without the capacity to make it work, which left them too dependent on the Russian army being in a weakened and demoralised state.









• Ukraine is under full-scale Russian invasion and is fighting for its very survival.









• Otherwise he would be stuck with many more months of war without tangible progress and a growing sense of futility.









• “If leaders explain the stakes and the costs, this is a manageable burden,” he told me.









• Second, he controls the state media apparatus and has censored other media organisations, limiting the information available to the general public.

President Putin could seek to regain more parts of Russia's former empire by sending troops into ex-Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia, that are not part of Nato. Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. https://gilliam-albrechtsen-4.technetbloggers.de/ukraine-russia-war-latest-hungary-signals-major-shift-in-ukraine-funding-stance-russia-claims-it-has-taken-control-of-kharkiv-village-1707600485 could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states - which are members of Nato - such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad. When I asked the official who wanted to remain anonymous about recent tactical gains in the east, including a handful of small villages, he lifted his hand with his finger and thumb pinching the air perhaps half an inch apart.

Find peace

The Kremlin maintains that elections are fair and he is genuinely popular. But Peskov told Bloomberg News, "President Putin has stated numerous times that Russia was, is and will continue to be open for negotiations on Ukraine." "We are unaware of the shifts in Russia's position described," US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, per Bloomberg. The sources reportedly said that Putin could be willing to end his demands over Ukraine's neutrality and, eventually, his opposition to the country joining NATO. All one can say is that intense diplomatic activity can generate its own dynamic and could be a feature of 2024 largely absent from 2023.

He uses Russia's internal security forces to suppress that opposition. But this turns sour and enough members of Russia's military, political and economic elite turn against him. The West makes clear that if Putin goes and is replaced by a more moderate leader, then Russia will see the lifting of some sanctions and a restoration of normal diplomatic relations. But it may not be implausible if the people who have benefited from Mr Putin no longer believe he can defend their interests.

Offering Article 5 protection to Ukrainian territory in this fashion would be akin to admitting a divided Germany to NATO after World War II and to America’s security pact with South Korea after the armistice that halted the Korean War without reunifying the Korean Peninsula. This would be a defensive pact, but not a commitment to take direct part in any future offensive operations Ukraine might choose to undertake. Foreign policy wasn’t expected to play a major role in the 2024 campaign — especially as inflation surged in the first two years of Biden’s term and economists last year predicted a recession. That is a flashpoint for Putin, who is believed to be mainly interested in a strategic deal with Washington under which Ukraine will not enter NATO.

• The Ukrainian General Staff says its forces have repelled Russian attacks near Avdiivka itself, as well as from settlements to the north west, south west, and directly west of the town.









• But if Joe Biden is defeated in the US presidential election in 2024 by Donald Trump or another isolationist candidate, it could pose serious questions for Ukraine’s war effort.









• The Russian offensives at the start of the year were unimpressive with crude and unimaginative tactics.

"My aim is to change Russia. I may not be president on 17 March but I should have the best result." "He practically destroyed the key institutions of the modern state of Russia. My job will be to restore these institutions," said Mr Nadezhdin. Boris Nadezhdin told the BBC he was unlikely to win 17 March elections but Mr Putin would not last six more years. A would-be challenger to Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he would end the war in Ukraine on day one of his presidency. "We are determined to reach our goals. And would prefer to complete it by diplomatic means. If not, the military operation will be continued till we reach our goals," he added.

Research suggests that the path to war resembles a bargaining game, where countries compete over issues like territory and resources to patriotism or the style of governance. Rather than going to war, which is very costly, competing states prefer to settle these disagreements peacefully. Ideally, the two sides do this based upon their relative probabilities of winning a hypothetical war.

• Meanwhile, any prospect of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine look slim despite efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table.









• The war in Ukraine conjures up a strong sense of historical déjà vu.









• "This is a tripwire that would trigger the might of all Nato, including the US, UK and France."









• Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more.









• Adding a democratic Ukraine in NATO would mark the utter and permanent defeat of Putin’s crusade to absorb it into a Russian empire.

Massive cyber-attacks sweep across Ukraine, targeting key national infrastructure. President Zelensky is either assassinated or flees, to western Ukraine or even overseas, to set up a government in exile. President Putin declares victory and withdraws some forces, leaving enough behind to maintain some control.

President Macron of France has spoken to President Putin on the phone. And, surprisingly, Russian and Ukrainian officials have met for talks on the border with Belarus. But, by agreeing to the talks, Putin seems to at least have accepted the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire. Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region. Ukraine will probably try to exploit the success it has had in re-establishing its control over the western Black Sea and its vital trade corridor to the Bosphorus. A Christmas Eve story in the New York Times claimed that Putin might be trying to find a way out.

Ukraine will do all it can to keep pressure on the Russians there to make it untenable for the Russian navy in Sevastopol, the handful of air force bases there and their logistics base at Dzankoy. It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle.

• The Ukrainians reverted to the sort of smaller-scale operations that they understood better.









• The fierce determination of the Ukrainian people up to this point suggests that this will not occur any time soon.









• In his October assessment, Snyder floated one scenario in which Ukrainian military victories prompt a power struggle in Moscow that leads Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, as Putin and his rivals judge that the armed forces loyal to them are most useful on the homefront.









• As for Ukraine's offensive, Mr Podolyak said the Wagner mutiny did not last long enough to influence the fighting along a front of 1,800 kilometres, the longest - he said - in any war since 1945.

As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs. If we see the average Ukrainian’s willingness to suffer and fight lagging, it should give us cause for concern. To this end, western governments have stepped up humanitarian and defensive aid to Ukraine, in order to ensure that Ukrainian support for the war endures.