And they have made clear that they will not send combat troops to Ukraine. This included a rise in shelling over the line of contact, with separatists significantly ramping up their attacks against Ukrainian positions using heavy weapons like artillery, while at the same time falsely blaming the increased violence on the Ukrainian military. A full-on assault of Ukraine, with Russian forces attacking from the north, east and south, would aim to encircle the most potent arm of the Ukrainian military in the east, as well as make a move on the capital.
That figure cannot be confirmed, but it followed a US estimate of some 100,000 Ukrainians killed or wounded by November. Before Western artillery arrived in the east last summer, Kyiv officials said 100 to 200 troops were dying every day. https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-big-is-ukraine-compared-to-uk.html has captured the town of Soledar this year and has hopes of seizing the eastern city of Bakhmut on the road to key cities to the west, and of recapturing territory it lost last autumn. Big military formations - with forces of 30,000 troops and armour and all the rest of it - can only do what they've done on exercises and manoeuvres, so we know in advance how they're going to fight. They precede their attacks with air support and artillery - hitting the targets just before the armour arrives - and do that very precisely. Like any force, if you're going to take a capital city you don't go in from one side, you try to encircle it.
How Putin changed his war aims
It has faced resistance within the European Union, and from the United States as well as Ukraine, on the grounds that it increases Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, denies Ukraine transit fees and makes it more vulnerable to Russian invasion. As diplomats met in Brussels on Tuesday, it remained unclear whether Putin’s order to send troops into Ukraine would be the trigger for the massive sanctions the EU has been threatening for weeks. The decision marks the end of the Minsk peace deal, a troubled road map out of the conflict that would have left the territories in Ukraine. That deal also contained a ceasefire agreement, which is now also void. More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that has occurred since 2014. Military analysts believe the Russian invaders would seek to encircle Ukraine's most battle-hardened forces in the east, bomb their main command posts in and around the capital and disrupt supply lines.
- Still, Russia’s performance so far has been so poor that the scales may ultimately tip toward Ukraine.
- "Both black boxes have been discovered — a flight parameters recording device and a voice recorder," the agency was told.
- “They’re causing tremendous damage to civilian infrastructure,” said Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
- But they've repeatedly said there will be no Nato "boots on the ground" because Ukraine is not a Nato member.
Compared to Cold War practice, today, Kremlin propagandists and officials engage in highly irresponsible rhetoric advocating for the use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal against Ukraine, and possibly even against NATO states. This is backed by exercises (at least two this year) openly testing the Russian military’s ability to fire nuclear warheads at Western targets and protect Russia from possible counter-strikes. The Russian president has even shown his willingness to bring Belarus into the nuclear equation. Such brinkmanship has contributed to the return of nuclear arms into the power competition on a global stage. The Head of the Duma Defense Committee Andrei Kartapolov told the RBC news agency that the Ilyushin-76 military transport plane was "shot down by three Patriot or IRIS-T missiles," that had been given to Ukraine's armed forces by its Western allies.
Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
"Hotspots are hotter than for a long time, fault-lines increasingly tense and war seems to be proliferating. But the alarm being raised by generals and spooks is a bit of a red herring and, let's face it, they're keen to make the case for bigger budgets and bigger roles. "There are no really good choices. A direct attack on Iran would be one way but that could also open Pandora's box. And we've already seen how little the retaliatory strikes on the Houthis in Yemen have achieved. "The spark for the next major global conflict could well turn out to be the events of October 7th. "And the warnings are here in this period - there is enormous global uncertainty and the period of unequivocal US power is over. Sky News spoke to experts about whether World War Three is a possibility - and if we really are living in a "pre-war world". For his part, Trump has said that he'd be able to resolve the Ukraine war "in one day" if he was reelected, saying he'd convince the leaders of Ukraine and Russia to make a deal.
"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. Ukraine will do all it can to keep pressure on the Russians there to make it untenable for the Russian navy in Sevastopol, the handful of air force bases there and their logistics base at Dzankoy. Russia lacks a decisive, breakthrough capability to overrun Ukraine and will do what it can to hold on to what it currently occupies, using the time to strengthen its defences while it hopes for the West to lose the will to continue supporting Ukraine. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority.
Why might Putin risk nuclear war over Ukraine?
The White House later clarified the US had no indication that Russia was preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons. "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. "The Ukrainian leadership was well aware of the impending exchange and was informed of how the prisoners would be delivered," he said during a speech in the State Duma, according to a NBC News translation of his comments.
- 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.
- Cold War analogies will not be helpful in a world with a Russianized Ukraine.
- US leadership has once again proven essential in successfully mobilising international efforts, especially in coordinating military support to Ukraine.
- To date, only one city has definitively fallen to the Russians since the invasion began in the early morning of Feb. 24 — Kherson — although others like Mariupol, in the south, appear to be perilously close amid food, water and power shortages.
- "Russia can win the war, or the Ukrainians can win the war. And, as you're seeing things now, if you really think about it, what has been achieved this year? Very little has been achieved by Russia, and you can say the same thing for the Ukrainians," he said.
The majority of European countries turned to the tried and tested protective security umbrella of NATO, backed by American military capabilities. With or without a nuclear threat dimension, Russia’s neighbours already have valid reasons to fear the Russian predator. They feel that, if not stopped in and by Ukraine, Putin may entertain aggression against other territories. The historic decision by both Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership points to the gravity of this threat.