Ukraine Lasting toll of war beyond measure Security Council hears

But even if this occurs, that doesn’t mean the war itself will end with Putin’s downfall. "They understand the wider strategic point, which is that this is a confrontation between the West and Russia and at stake is not just the future territorial integrity of Ukraine but the security construct for Europe and the West with Russia," he noted. Russia was not present at the discussions, however, and U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby stated ahead of the talks that the White House did not expect any "tangible deliverables." Meanwhile, any prospect of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine look slim despite efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

• Ultimately, it appears that this war will not end quickly, as it will take a considerable amount of time for either side to make the other give up.









• Moscow has proved resourceful when it comes to building autonomy into critical goods, Lichfield explained.









• It is clear to the most dispassionate observer of the war that Ukraine is having to fight very hard, and take casualties in troops and equipment, including the armour supplied by Nato.









• And while we have no right to tell Ukrainians to stop fighting before their country is whole, we also have no right to expect them to keep fighting at any cost.

The senior UN political and peacebuilding official also warned that the lasting toll of the devastating war is beyond measure. Maybe Russian forces get bogged down, hampered by low morale, poor logistics and inept leadership. Maybe it takes longer for Russian forces to secure cities like Kyiv whose defenders fight from street to street. The fighting has echoes of Russia's long and brutal struggle in the 1990s to seize and largely destroy Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

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Ukraine has continued ground operations on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River with heavy battles reported to be ongoing in the area around the village of Krynky, about 30km (19 miles) from the city of Kherson. More probable is a continuation of current tactics - a slow grinding of Ukrainian forces on narrow directions and a slow advance, like in Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas, with possible same tactics in Svatove-Kreminna area. "The price we pay is in money. While the price the Ukrainians pay is in blood. If authoritarian regimes see that force is rewarded we will all pay a much higher price. And the world will become a more dangerous world for all of us."

• The Russian pull-out from Kherson has partly led me to this conclusion.









• The debates still rages about whether an earlier tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut would have made sense.









• “Those who are against the war have left, and those who remain are adapting,” Meister said.









• Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia.









• It's too early to plan a victory parade in Kyiv but all the momentum is with Ukraine now and there is no doubt in my mind that they will win this war, probably in 2023.

It is clear to the most dispassionate observer of the war that Ukraine is having to fight very hard, and take casualties in troops and equipment, including the armour supplied by Nato. Another senior official, who spoke on condition he was not named, went further, suggesting that President Putin would be forced to dismiss his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, perhaps as a response to another military setback. 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 military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines.

To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO—Right Now

The EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova is more than just symbolic. 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. President Volodomyr Zelensky has admitted his country's spring offensive has not been the success he hoped.

That, he said, is “because the Ukrainians know” that it is in Western interests “to not let them collapse”. He said there is little the West can do to stop Ukrainians from trying to take back all of their country’s territory currently held by Russia — including parts that Moscow has formally, though illegally, annexed. Equally, Ukraine’s dependence on their weapons gives Western powers a say in how Kyiv plots its strategy. In theory, they could threaten to curtail support if they grow weary of the war or if Ukraine, encouraged by its military advances, crosses a threshold that could spark an escalation unacceptable to the West. Meanwhile, https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/ShannonBreamSAgeOnFoxNews have pledged coveted battle tanks to Ukraine, and there is much talk of a new Russian spring offensive. Never,” United States President Joe Biden said in Poland last week, a day after a previously unannounced visit to Kyiv.

Ukraine: How might the war end? Five scenarios

In his TV address, Mr Zelensky said the conflict "will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy". Writing on the messaging app Telegram, he said Ukrainian troops had repelled 11 attacks on the frontline - with eight tanks among the Russian vehicles destroyed. Meanwhile, heavy fighting is taking place in and around Severodonetsk, as Russian forces step up efforts to seize the whole of the Luhansk region. That scenario, of a Russian military incursion into a Nato country, almost unthinkable until recently, is when Nato and Russia could indeed be at war with each other. "No one thinks the UK-led Battle Group [in Estonia] by itself would deter the second most powerful nuclear country in the world," he says.

• Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest.









• But this turns sour and enough members of Russia's military, political and economic elite turn against him.









• He uses Russia's internal security forces to suppress that opposition.









• Notably, in a reversal of perceptions a year ago, some experts could envision a decisive Ukrainian victory against Russia, but none forecasts a decisive Russian win against Ukraine.









• "The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open," said UN Secretary General António Guterres.

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. Ukraine is a democratic country aggressively pursuing European integration.

Some Ukrainian officials acknowledged the fear that gives Western leaders sleepless nights, that a public collapse of President Putin's regime might lead to real danger as his would-be successors jockey for power in a state with the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Mr Danilov said they included security forces, officials and representatives of Russia's oligarchs, who believe that Mr Putin's decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine in February last year has been a personal disaster for them as well as a threat to Russia. The report, cites two people with close links to the Kremlin and says that senior US officials were made aware of the signals in December via an unnamed intermediary.

• The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States.









• The war in Ukraine assumed international dimensions the moment Russian armoured columns rolled across the border in February 2022.









• “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.









• And Kyiv will likely also try to spring more military surprises on the Russian invaders to knock them off balance in some areas.









• So far, western countries have shown strong unity in wanting to help Ukraine force out Russia.

“Even technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they’re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves — just people rushing across the field getting shot at,” Jensen said. As the war enters its second year, the spigot of military aid is still gushing. But industrial capacities are spotty, and nations have started to scrutinize how much equipment they can spare while maintaining their own self-defense requirements and that of NATO.

• To a lesser extent, Putin is dependent on the support of the general population.









• This effort has also involved bolstering air defense systems and building fortifications, razor wire obstructions and anti-tank obstacles and ditches along Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus, these officials say.









• Is Ukraine winning, because it saved Kyiv and pushed Russia back from Kharkiv; or is it losing, because Russia has taken Mariupol and may soon encircle Severodonetsk?









• The conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its second calendar year.









• For now, such cracks in the West are contained by the mantra that the future is for Ukrainians to decide.