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

Russia is also massively boosting military spending in 2024, with almost 30% of its fiscal expenditure to be directed toward the armed forces. Its military-industrial complex has also ramped up the production of hardware from drones to aircraft. 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.

Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper. Unnamed Indian government sources have suggested India wants to distance itself from Russia, according to Reuters news agency. Mr Szijarto will be in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. If the US abandons the military alliance, it will fall to European countries to ensure a Ukrainian victory, Mr OBrien says. European countries have largely outsourced much of their military capacity and thinking on strategy and security to the States through NATO. 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.

Kyiv working to organise visit by Hungary's Orban, Ukraine deputy PM says

After liberating a handful of villages in the summer, Ukrainian and Russian forces have been caught in largely attritional battles, with neither side making significant gains. To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole. Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French. Mark Temnycky, a Ukrainian-American journalist and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center said that delays in 2023 allowed Russia to fortify positions in the south and east of Ukraine, regroup and re-strategize. Despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin's closest EU ally, vetoing a $55 billion support package from Brussels for Kyiv in mid-December, backing from other European allies has been strong.

• While its forces are pushing to also seize the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russia on Thursday announced the withdrawal of its troops from the strategically important Snake Island.









• Peter Szijjarto has arrived in Ukraine for talks with senior officials today.









• Emily Harding, a former National Security Council staffer, warned Tuesday that the U.S. and Europe should prepare for 8-10 years of economically disruptive conflict in Ukraine, Roll Call reports.









• I mean, an interesting thing about the regime is, of course, that Putin is the linchpin.









• Putin illegally annexed four territories from Ukraine in September and now presents Ukraine's efforts — backed by the West — to take back its own territory as a fascist attack on the Russian homeland.

And, nevertheless, the Nazi Kiev regime took this step, pursuing the goal to blame Russia for the destruction of the Ukrainian military. "This may indicate deliberate actions by Russia aimed at creating a threat to the life and safety of prisoners," it alleged. Ukraine's intelligence agency said it still did not have reliable and comprehensive information about who was on board and the number of passengers. "It is obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and with the emotions of our society," he said.

Putin’s ultimate aim is to seal Russia off from the west

At the moment, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has riveted the world, drawing more attention than the ongoing slaughters in other nations—a double standard that has been widely noted. But that gap in coverage is likely to become even more striking the longer the conflict continues, because the factors that make a long war in Ukraine seemingly inevitable are the same ones that make it unlikely to slip from the world’s collective radar. If conflicts in places such as Ethiopia, Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, and Yemen have proved anything, it’s that wars are easy to start, but are also brutal, intractable, and difficult to end. The fickle nature of the international media means that protracted conflicts quickly lose the world’s attention, if they ever had it to begin with.

• The plant, on the north-western outskirts of the town, dominates the main road into Avdiivka and, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) believes if Russian forces were to secure it, resupplying the town would "become increasingly difficult for Ukraine".









• Alexei Kulemzin said Ukraine was behind the strike on the eastern Ukrainian city, which is currently under Russian occupation.









• "This could be an insurgency that is bigger than our Afghan one in the 1980s in terms of things we could provide them that would really hurt Russia."









• Gen Sanders was not calling for conscription in his speech.









• I mean, the Kremlin has a very effective propaganda apparatus and is successful in inculcating some belief among the ordinary Russians that this is a just war, and thereby driving up the willingness of the Russian people to suffer costs.

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. He 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. https://notes.io/wiUmm was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. While defense spending in the United States and Europe is trending upward, in large part because of Russia’s attack, industrial capacity to crank out weapons and ammunition has emerged as a bottleneck.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

“The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said. At the same time, election season in the United States — Ukraine’s most important backer — stands to spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is a costly nuisance for America. WASHINGTON and ROME — Germany’s promise early this year to send tanks to Ukraine marked the country’s latest concession and provided a cap to the gradual escalation in the kind of equipment allies were supplying.

Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. 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.

• One way to do that is with an armistice, a temporary agreement to cease military operations, but one that does not conclude the war decisively.









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









• Russia's relationship with the outside world will be different.









• And, surprisingly, Russian and Ukrainian officials have met for talks on the border with Belarus.









• Western leaders have said the war in Ukraine could last for years and will require long-term military support as Russia brought forward reserve forces in an apparent attempt to capture the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk.