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

How long the fighting will last and the form it takes depends on the extent and type of the problem. Many experts I consulted were pessimistic about the prospect of  a negotiated settlement to end the war in the foreseeable future. But a couple offered scenarios for what such a settlement could look like, portraying them as more guesswork than predictions. Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more. Watch how the rest of the world regards the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions.

• Regardless of a country’s government style, a leader is still dependent upon the support of a group of people, or coalition, to stay in power.
• Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority.
• Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance.

There is a difference between keeping options open, perhaps seeing what response tentative, private probes might get, and going public with a concrete proposal. Most likely a new diplomatic effort would start with a third party initiative. Anything that generated any momentum would certainly change the context. Then both sides would have to show they cared about peace, even while reserving their positions. Military moves would start to be judged by how they affected prospective talks.  Even if there was  https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-did-india-abstain-ukraine.html  in peace negotiations these could well be played for time and propaganda effect without much expectation that they would lead to an agreement.

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“Those who are against the war have left, and those who remain are adapting,” Meister said. Also in the mix is a pledge from France to ship AMX-10 RC light, wheeled tanks. But this winter, they’re expected to launch attacks across open plains, which would be harder to defeat, said Daniel Rice, a former U.S. Army captain who last year became a special adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military. And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That’s because the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust finite resources and, hence, the parties are more willing to gamble.

• Neither was his 2015 intervention in Syria to save the government of Bashar al-Assad a wild-eyed gamble.
• Congress provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid.
• Still, Western arms — even though supplied in an incremental, cautious manner — in Ukraine have similarly been key to halting Russian advances.
• Russia achieves a breakthrough in the east either very soon, before Ukraine gets its western weaponry in place in a few weeks, or after a Ukrainian counteroffensive fails.

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. After a year in which both sides looked forward to military advances and were disappointed, this new year starts with expectations so low that the only way we can possibly be surprised is by developments that get us closer to a resolution. The most recent reports suggests that a deal is getting closer in the Senate but it will not be finalised until later in January, assuming that there are not further delays. Even with these new packages some of the shortages – particularly in artillery shells – will continue. This is already starting to be felt in front-line operations so that commanders are having to ration allocations, making awkward priorities about operational needs. The main reason for the assessment that it suits Putin to hang in there is that over time western support for Ukraine will drift away.

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After all, Russian defeats in the Crimean War in the 19th century, and losses to Japan and in Afghanistan in the 20th century, all catalysed profound domestic changes. A protracted and costly World War I helped usher in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Russian ruling elite saw the Soviet Union’s collapse merely as a reconfiguration in which former Soviet countries would “continue to be together in some way”, Popova told Al Jazeera, whereas Ukraine saw it as an opportunity to be fully independent. Emory University’s Reiter listed two main reasons for the lack of appetite in Ukraine for any negotiations that would mean accepting the loss of territory. “The war has been so absolutely brutal that they’re fearful of what will happen in territories handed over to Russia,” he said. Unlike in the case of Serbia, experts do not foresee a scenario in which the US-led Western alliance would actively attack Russia.

Ukrainian forces, once equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be “designed to punch a hole through a defensive network,” Donahoe predicted. 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.

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The Biden administration earlier this month announced it is sending Ukraine the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb. The GLSDB has a range of up to 93 miles, doubling Ukraine’s strike range. However, that still falls short of the ATACMS, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian targets about 190 miles away.