If Russia Invaded Ukraine

Refugees will flee in multiple directions, quite possibly in the millions. And those parts of the Ukrainian military that are not directly defeated will continue fighting, echoing the partisan warfare that tore apart this whole region of Europe during and after World War II. Cold War analogies will not be helpful in a world with a Russianized Ukraine.

• Over six million (at the time of writing) have had to flee Ukraine; many more have been internally displaced.
• According to the United Nations, on March 9, evacuations did happen in some places, but there was “limited movement” in the vulnerable areas, like Mariupol and the outskirts of Kyiv.
• In the meantime, Nato has focussed on shoring up its eastern borders.

If the United States doesn’t pass the supplemental [bill to approve aid to Ukraine], and we get this chorus of members of Congress calling for the United States to pull away from Ukraine, Putin will be able to switch this around and say, “There you go. The United States is not a world leader.” And there will be a chilling effect for all our other allies. In the past, Putin has actually, for example, approached the Japanese and said, “Look, we can be your interlocutor with China. The United States is not going to be there to assist you in a crunch.” And that’s certainly what this is going to look like. One thing that we need to bear in mind here is that Putin turned for assistance to two countries that should give Americans and members of Congress pause — Iran and North Korea. Russia has had significant shortfalls of ammunition and sophisticated technology because of sanctions and other constraints.

There could be collateral damage from sanctions on Russia

Russia could seize much of the east and demand a new political arrangement from Kyiv or simply annex the area, as it did with Crimea, experts said. Previous smaller-scale operations failed to resolve Russia's dispute with Ukraine or to meet Moscow's political objectives, Kofman said. "If they weren't able to compel Ukraine towards a desirable outcome by taking half of the Donbass, what would another limited incursion achieve exactly?" he said. "The most likely military scenario in my view is going to be a series of rolling operations that they can stop at any point along the way based on how the West reacts," said Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general who was commander of U.S.

He doesn’t have the equivalent of the New York Times and Washington Post writing articles about how old he is or how he might have tripped walking downstairs or, in  the case of Vladimir Putin, how much Botox did he use this morning? There’s no one digging into every little part of his personal and political history. Now, the problem, of course, is that currently many members of Congress and others are thinking about whether they want to run to be vice president for Trump, and what they should perhaps do now to support Trump and pave the way for his presidency. So the idea of giving Biden anything that could positively affect the election is just a bridge too far. But for Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage. He’s trying to whip up anti-United States sentiment wherever he can.

How the war in Ukraine began, and what’s happened so far

Now, whether Iran asked Putin to do this, I honestly can’t say, but we can all see this deepening relationship between Russia and Iran. But if there may be little that the West can do to prevent a Russian military conquest, it will be able to influence what happens afterward. Very often the seeds of trouble lie beneath the veneer of military victory. But it can do so only by prosecuting a criminal war and by devastating the life of a nation-state that has never invaded Russia. The United States and Europe and their allies and other parts of the world will draw conclusions and be critical of Russian actions. Through their alliances and in their support for the people of Ukraine, the United States and Europe can embody the alternative to wars of aggression and to a might-makes-right ethos.

• It would be a strategic quagmire, with Putin committing a massive strategic blunder in just about every respect.
• But what you want to have is Ukraine in a position to have a negotiation, a diplomatic solution, on its terms, not on Russia’s terms.
• US President Joe Biden said Mr Putin's nuclear threat was the biggest since the Cuban missile crisis, and that Washington was "trying to figure out" Mr Putin's off ramp from the war.

More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that has occurred since 2014. Putin has also sent his military on a “peacekeeping mission” to Ukraine, meaning that Russia will formally occupy sovereign Ukrainian territory for a second time following the 2014 annexation of Crimea. A document signed by Putin on Monday also allows him to establish military bases or place missiles in the territories.

Fighting is concentrated on frontlines in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions, particularly in the Donbas. On July 3, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that their forces had established “full control” of Lysychansk, the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the eastern Luhansk region. In effect, Moscow now controls the entire Luhansk region and more than half of the Donetsk region that lies just south, and which together comprises 75% of the Donbas. Ukraine also conceded Severodonetsk just north of Lysychansk on June 25 after weeks of some of the war’s bloodiest fighting. But with Ukrainian success, including President Vlodomyr Zelensky refusing to flee the capital, this approach failed.

Putin ousted

If the destruction of cities like Mariupol is anything to go by, Russia doesn't seem intent on preserving the areas it's fighting to take control of. "Putin understands that he must do something to show evidence of the Russian power that he has been promising to his people, and has been so drastically underdelivered in this war." Instead, Russian forces were faced with several setbacks, including logistical issues, equipment issues, morale issues, as well as being faced with a far more formidable opponent in the Ukrainian forces than anticipated. "Added to that are the recent border crisis involving thousands of migrants in Belarus, as well as Russia's backing of separatists in the Caucasus and elsewhere," he said. The war that erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014 has already left 14,000 dead and an estimated 1.4 million displaced.

If ground forces faltered, Russia could up the ante, such as by carpet bombing, a tactic it used in Chechnya and Aleppo. The United States and NATO allies worry that  Russia may be planning an invasion. Washington has proclaimed an “ironclad commitment” to Ukraine's security. Warnings of an expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine have a “High Noon” feel. A renewed crisis could spur the United States and its NATO allies to go beyond, perhaps well beyond, their responses to Russia's 2014 assault. This militarization could cause a dramatic increase in defense spending by both the United States and NATO over the next decade.

Russian efforts at sowing disorder can be contrasted to Western efforts at restoring order. Russia has Europe’s largest conventional military, which it is more than ready to use. The EU’s defense policy—in contrast to NATO’s—is far from being able to provide security for its members.

Ukraine’s resistance in the face of Russian aggression helped push Western leaders to take more robust action, as this fight became framed in Washington and in European capitals as a fight between autocracy and democracy.  https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-china-saying-about-ukraine.html  of credit goes to Zelenskyy himself, whose impassioned pleas to Western leaders motivated them to deliver more lethal aid to Ukraine and implement tougher sanctions. In the aftermath of Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, the United States and its allies imposed unprecedented sanctions and other penalties on Russia, acting with a swiftness and cohesion that surprised some observers, including, most likely, Putin himself. The longer and harder the Ukrainian resistance fights, the more likely Russia may deploy more aggressive tactics to try to achieve their aims. They are trying to grind down the Ukrainian people’s morale, and unfortunately, that includes the bodies of Ukrainians,” Moller said. This toll is expected to climb, especially as the Russian offensive intensifies around Ukrainian cities, where shelling and strikes have hit civilian targets, and as efforts at high-level Ukraine-Russia negotiations have so far failed.

It would be wrong to say that the front lines in Ukraine are stalemated, but both sides are capable of fighting each other to a standstill as they each try to take strategic initiatives. This will make the war in Ukraine a longer and more traumatic enterprise than anything Europe has known since the middle of the last century. The coming year will demonstrate whether Russia - and its suppliers in North Korea and Iran - or Ukraine - and its Western backers - are able and prepared to meet the voracious demands of industrial-age warfare. For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability. President Volodomyr Zelensky has admitted his country's spring offensive has not been the success he hoped.