In fact, the Ukrainian government has failed to implement the agreements signed in Minsk to end the conflict over the Donbass. These required it to offer autonomy to the breakaway regions within a new Ukrainian constitutional settlement, recognising its diversity. It has taken no steps to act on this signed commitment, nor have the western powers pushed it to.
But Ukraine joining NATO could itself be how the war ends, consistent with Biden’s current policy — and at a time and on terms set by Ukraine and its allies, not by Russia. Gaining security within NATO as a strong, pluralistic, democratic state would absolutely count as a victory for Ukraine — arguably as big as quickly regaining Crimea. Under this scenario, Russia escalates its military operations. There are more indiscriminate artillery and rocket strikes across Ukraine. The Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes.
On what terms could the war in Ukraine stop?
I wrote about this recently, noting that we're seeing air battles daily, but pilots are rarely involved. As a result, Russia essentially stopped flying fighter jets over Ukraine. Numbers are hard to come by, but Russia had an estimated 1,500 fighter jets before the war began and still has the vast majority of them, probably 1,400 or more. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force.
- In September Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary-general of NATO, and Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, proposed a “Kyiv Security Compact” which would offer security assistance short of a mutual-defence pact.
- Even where there is no support for the invasion, there is no willingness to condemn it, still less to line up with hypocritical and disastrous western sanctions.
- All these measures were approved when both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats.
- Should Ukraine and its allies simply carry on, hoping for a breakthrough in 2025 or beyond?
- When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, the new Russian Federation inherited all of the USSR's treaties, diplomatic relationships, even embassies.
But most international efforts concentrate on the first part of this equation and not the second. Peace negotiations often take place in the UN Security Council with the aim of agreeing a formal resolution that, it is assumed, the belligerents dare not ignore. The prospect of a ceasefire resolution creates its own operational urgency. Russia’s recent military setbacks have led to hopes that the war might be over sooner rather than later, bringing an end to both the continuing death and destruction and the global economic disruption it has caused. What had appeared to be https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-many-jews-live-in-ukraine.html -moving confrontation is now more dynamic.
Russia's at war with Ukraine. Here's how we got here
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. Ukraine's air defenses have been surprisingly effective against Russia's air force. After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine.
If Russia continues to suffer “defeats” at this pace, then in another two months the entire south of Ukraine will be in ruins, cities such as Odesa will resemble Mariupol, and thousands upon thousands more Ukrainians will have died. One reason that countries such as Germany have been reluctant to send heavier weapons to the Ukrainians is that Berlin does not want to give Putin any pretext for escalation. Just ask Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose improbable assassination in Sarajevo sparked World War I.
My wife says we can't retire on $2.5m - a money pro agreed it was a bad idea
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. Now the Chief of the General Staff, Britain’s top solider, is saying that the army must once again be prepared to fight a land war against Russia in Europe.
- By early December, details of Russia's plans for a 175,000-strong invasion had appeared in the Washington Post.
- As the earlier talks demonstrated, one cannot say that fighting and talking are exclusive.
- But Russia under Putin has never ended its wars at the negotiating table; at best it has frozen them, keeping its options open.
- But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict.
- As it has often done with Israel, America may at some point try to limit Ukraine’s ambitions.