So for a war to end, the minimum war aims of at least one side must change And then the question you’ve got to ask is, what causes those war aims to change War actually does something that we cannot do in peacetime It lets you see on the battlefield how strong you really are, how resolved and how strong your opponent is
Russia’s defence ministry also said its Iskander missiles had destroyed weaponry supplied by the west in the Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, north-west of Luhansk A Ukrainian interior ministry official said Russian forces were trying to approach Kharkiv, which experienced intense shelling earlier in the war, and turn it into a “frontline city” Mr Putin wonders if he has bitten off more than he can chew 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 Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities see the continuing destruction of their country and conclude that political compromise might be better than such devastating loss of life
Hein Goemans I’m relatively optimistic about it, but I mean, if Trump wins in 2024, things will change I think that Great Britain will stand squarely behind Ukraine and as many people in the west I just really don’t understand the strategy or the plans of Scholz
Industrial-age warfare is a struggle between societies What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle 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
Explosions were set off in cities and military sites, airports, and airbases were seized On February 24, Russia launched a military invasion on Ukraine Since then, conflict has been escalating from all directions A raft of Western sanctions is squeezing the Russian economy, undermining Moscow’s power and influence on an international level but Putin himself seems unflinching Through a series of video calls on Thursday, Mr Putin also paid tribute to his fallen soldiers as heroes, but described the conflict as going “according to plan”
Ukrainian military officials have conceded that hopes and expectations of a great breakthrough in the counteroffensive were not met They predict intense fighting is likely to continue into the next year but say Kyiv's forces are unlikely to launch any more counteroffensives Russia, meanwhile, is likely to focus on consolidating the territory it has already seized, particularly in eastern Ukraine Hein Goemans Well, some people would say yes, because it makes clear that this is a war caused by a commitment problem that no peace deal will stick But more generally it’s because the underlying dynamic is different from the short war
That hasn't let up, if only because it's a powerful emotional and recruitment tool Twenty million Soviets — Russians, Ukrainians and others — died fighting Hitler's armies In other words, the war affected nearly every family here While defense spending in the United States and Europe is trending upward, in large part because of Russia’s attack, industrial capacity to crank out weapons and ammunition has emerged as a bottleneck
On Wednesday the country's defence minister, Oleksiy Resnikov, met some 50 countries in the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels to ask for more arms and ammunition Ukrainian officials have spoken bluntly in recent days about the need to boost the supply of heavy weapons to the country if Russian forces there are to be defeated The prime minister, who visited Ukraine's capital on Friday, said supplies of weapons, equipment, ammunition, and training to Kyiv needed to outpace Moscow's efforts to rearm itself “This story is as big [as], if not bigger, than 9/11 and the fall of the Soviet Union,” Katerji said, comments that have partially echoed those made by Britain’s foreign secretary