Former NATO commander says the Ukraine war could end just like the Korean War, with Russia clinging on to parts of Ukrainian land

Ukraine is more than holding its own, but it wanted to have liberated another chunk of its territory during 2023 and that has not happened. In addition to being willing to accept huge losses, the Russians have shown themselves to be adept at defensive operations and have improved their use of drones and electronic warfare capabilities. There is also the extremely tricky issue of mobilisation which is now being addressed but requires up to 500,000 recruits. In a June article by Sergei Karaganov, an established ultra-nationalist analyst, which I discussed in October, most interest was in his urging Putin to take more nuclear risks (advice rejected by Putin). I was more struck by his description of the problem he was trying to solve. Suppose, he wondered, if the four regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) or perhaps the whole of eastern and southern Ukraine were fully occupied.

• When President Bill Clinton signed that law in 1996, several countries accused the U.S. of violating their sovereignty, passing their own laws to make the U.S. regulation effectively unenforceable.
• While those sanctions have indeed hurt Russia, they’ve also contributed to skyrocketing energy and food prices in the West (even as Putin profits by selling his oil, gas, and coal at higher prices).
• Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest.
• When Ukraine retook Robotyne in August it was hoped that its forces would be able to cut the land corridor to Crimea, making Moscow's supply lines more complicated.
• Many experts I consulted, however, advised girding for a struggle that could last a lot longer, even if the war in its more acute form resolves sooner.

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. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive - some of each could combine to produce different outcomes. Russia's relationship with the outside world will be different. And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place. He judges that continuing the war may be a greater threat to his leadership than the humiliation of ending it. China intervenes, putting pressure on Moscow to compromise, warning that it will not buy Russian oil and gas unless it de-escalates.

Win, lose, stalemate or a shock: how might the Ukraine war end?

A conflict where a major nuclear power and energy exporter violated the sovereignty of a country that is a keystone of global food security was never going to be contained to just two countries. The next key date for Putin is the presidential election on 17 March. The election is so obviously rigged that it is hard for outsider observers to take it seriously as a landmark date. He would no doubt like some tangible victory before then – say the capture of all the Donbas that would allow him to argue that core objectives have been met. If there has not been any progress then at least he should take stock. The winter will be over and he can see what territory, if any, has been taken.

For a war that has defied expectations, those questions might seem impossible to answer. Yet I recently posed them to several top historians, political scientists, geopolitical forecasters, and former officials—because only in imagining potential futures can we understand the rough bounds of the possible, and our own agency in influencing the outcome we want. This Swedish Air Force handout image from March 2, 2022, shows Russian fighter jets violating Swedish airspace east of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland.

Could the fighting spread to other countries?

They had lots of new equipment but it came in many different types. Furthermore the battles in the Donbas against the Russians, including for Bakhmut (which was eventually taken in June) had come at a high cost, with many experienced soldiers lost in the fight. The debates still rages about whether an earlier tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut would have made sense. One reason why the effects may be contained might be the speed with which the crisis came and went. This was at the dog end of the costly and unimpressive Russian offensives of the first part of the year. Surovikin’s connections to Prigozhin left him banished (though not dead).

• Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles.
• The GLSDB has a range of up to 93 miles, doubling Ukraine’s strike range.
• To indicate which parts of Ukraine are under control by Russian troops we are using daily assessments published by the Institute for the Study of War with the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project.
• Yet six months on Putin does not give the appearance of having suffered long-term harm.
• He was reported to have sent messages through “multiple channels” since September that he was prepared to do a deal, including freezing the fighting along the current front lines.
• It started, they said, with his disastrous decision to mount a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

Other senior officials in Kyiv say they are convinced that Mr Putin is opposed by informal but organised networks of disenchanted insiders. "I think the countdown has started," said Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's closest adviser. With just three UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have forced the commander of the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw a third of his fleet from Sevastopol.

Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

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. That’s changed, with Germany now pledging to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks and approving other countries’ requests to follow suit.  https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-is-europe-not-helping-ukraine.html  authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine. 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.

• Most likely a new diplomatic effort would start with a third party initiative.
• 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.
• It could prove the best chance to achieve the victory that Ukraine and the democratic world need soon, while making it both Putin- and Trump-proof.

The war and Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s society and economy, but Moscow has blunted the worst effects and is unlikely to be left so weak as to be unable to pursue the war. Russia’s economy contracted by only a little more than 2 percent last year – far less than expected. Like Stalin’s invasion of Finland in the Winter War of 1939, the Russian army is bogged down and bloodied by a much smaller, outgunned enemy. Despite Ukraine’s gains against Russia, experts believe a frozen conflict or painful truce is most likely.

If routed, Russia could lash out at nato, or resort to chemical or even nuclear weapons to avoid defeat. In the long term, says Emmanuel Macron, the French president, Europe will need to find a way of living with Russia. Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, retorts, “It is much more dangerous giving in to Putin than provoking him.” American and European officials have quietly been helping Ukraine develop negotiating positions.

• Over the past year, Russia has, at times, temporarily taken control of large swathes of Ukrainian territory.
• He agreed to a House rules change that would allow any member to initiate a vote to remove him as speaker, forcing him to tread carefully even on issues that enjoy majority Republican support — such as Ukraine assistance.
• But the idea that Ukraine can be pressured into some kind of peace is “incorrect” and “denies Ukraine their agency”, said Branislav Slantchev, a professor of politics at the University of California, San Diego, and a specialist in war negotiations and how conflicts end.
• The pain it’s producing extends to people in faraway lands already barely surviving and with no way to end it.

Pressure would then grow on Kyiv to negotiate – not necessarily from the west, but perhaps led by China. However, Ukraine would be highly unlikely to formally cede any territory, given popular support for resistance to the Russian invasion.  Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring  counteroffensive makes incremental or even no progress in the spring and summer, partly because the west has failed to supply it with enough weaponry. The result is a protracted struggle that gradually lessens in intensity as the Russians run short on ammunition and resupply to Ukraine eases.

• Even if there was a sudden interest in peace negotiations these could well be played for time and propaganda effect without much expectation that they would lead to an agreement.
• 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.
• But even then, the very concept of victory may be inaccurate, they warned.
• Yet I recently posed them to several top historians, political scientists, geopolitical forecasters, and former officials—because only in imagining potential futures can we understand the rough bounds of the possible, and our own agency in influencing the outcome we want.
• He deployed no ground troops there, relying solely on airstrikes and missile attacks to avoid an Afghanistan-style quagmire.
• The obvious strategy is to try to break the road and rail corridor linking Russia proper to occupied Crimea, so cutting off the peninsula from its hinterland, with an attack towards Melitopol or Berdansk.