Posted on 02/07/2023 8:37:34 PM PST by Cronos
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will pass the one-year mark in the coming weeks with no end in sight to what is already the largest European conflict since World War II. Vladimir Putin initially envisaged a small, victorious war that would extinguish Ukrainian independence and force the country back into the Kremlin orbit. Instead, his armies have suffered a series of disastrous defeats that have shattered Russia’s reputation as a military superpower.
Despite the difficulties encountered in Ukraine, Putin has little choice but to continue with his invasion. The Russian dictator knows that unless he is able to rescue the situation, his regime may not survive. However, following the setbacks of the past year, many commentators now question Russia’s ability to achieve its military objectives.
With Putin’s army dangerously depleted by months of punishing losses in both men and armor, it is unclear whether Russia is currently capable of large-scale offensive operations. While major new advances cannot be ruled out, the Kremlin appears to be pinning significant hopes on weakening Ukraine’s will to resist while undermining international support for the country. The end goal is a compromise peace that would allow Russia to secure its current territorial gains in Ukraine while providing vital breathing space to rebuild Putin’s battered military.
For now, there is little indication that this strategy will work. While calls for a negotiated peace continue to surface sporadically in the international media, there appears to be a growing consensus among Western leaders that Russia must be defeated in order to secure a sustainable peace. This deepening commitment to a Ukrainian victory was evident in the first weeks of 2023, with news of expanded military aid for Kyiv including modern tanks and a list of other items that had previously been ruled out by Ukraine’s Western partners as excessively provocative.
Nor is there any indication that Ukraine is ready to admit defeat. On the contrary, as the first anniversary of the invasion approaches, it is increasingly clear that Russia has failed to break the morale of the Ukrainian population. Neither the shock of the initial invasion nor the brutality of Russia’s advancing army has succeeded in forcing Ukraine into submission. More recently, the Ukrainian public has withstood a nationwide Russian bombing campaign against residential and infrastructure targets designed to deprive people of access to essential amenities including heating, light, and water during the freezing winter months.
Moscow’s terror tactics appear to have backfired, strengthening Ukraine’s resolve while serving to convince the Ukrainian population that they will never be safe unless Russia is decisively defeated. Crucially, Ukrainians now view military victory over Russia as an entirely realistic outcome. Thanks to a string of battlefield successes in the second half of 2022, Ukrainians overwhelmingly believe in their country’s ultimate victory.
A comprehensive nationwide survey conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center in mid-December 2022 illustrates this faith in Ukrainian victory while also highlighting nationwide opposition to any compromises with the Kremlin. The poll found that 93 percent of respondents expect Ukraine to win the war, while just three percent expressed doubts. This reflects the growing sense of confidence generated by the successful September 2022 Kharkiv counter-offensive and the November liberation of Kherson, the only regional capital occupied by Russia. By the end of 2022, Ukrainian forces had liberated around 50 percent of the land seized by Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion ten months earlier.
The survey also offered importance insights into Ukrainian perceptions of victory. Perhaps the most significant finding was that Ukrainians are not ready to accept a return to the status quo on the eve of the full-scale invasion, when Russia already occupied Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine. Instead, a commanding majority of Ukrainians are convinced that only the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity within the country’s internationally recognized borders can bring peace.
There is very little appetite for the kind of territorial concessions and land-for-peace deals periodically proposed by international commentators. Just eight percent of surveyed Ukrainians said they would be prepared to accept the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea in order to end the war.
It is worth emphasizing that opposition to any kind of negotiated peace with Putin’s Russia is broadly consistent across Ukraine. For much of the post-Soviet period until the onset of Russian aggression in 2014, Ukraine experienced pronounced regional splits on issues of national memory and the country’s future geopolitical trajectory. However, support for any kind of economic or political integration with Russia has dramatically declined since 2014. Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has had an even more dramatic unifying impact on Ukraine and has brought the country together in opposition to Russia.
Over the past year, regions of southern and eastern Ukraine where pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politicians still enjoyed some support after 2014 have found themselves on the frontlines of the Russian invasion and have suffered disproportionately. Putin’s advancing army has reduced dozens of largely Russian-speaking towns and cities to rubble throughout the south and east of the country, killing thousands of civilians and subjecting millions more to forced deportation. Understandably, this has led to a fundamental reappraisal of attitudes toward Russia.
Opinions on Ukraine’s future security stance have also been transformed by the war. In the not-so-distant past, the issue of possible Ukrainian NATO membership was one of the most divisive on the country’s domestic political agenda. After Russia’s full-scale invasion, that is no longer the case. Majorities in every single region of Ukraine now firmly support the idea of joining NATO. If NATO membership is not possible in the short-term, the next best option is viewed as security alliances with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Central European countries such as Poland, as well as strengthening Ukraine’s own defense capacity.
Ukrainians in all parts of the country now resoundingly reject the once popular notion of geopolitical neutrality, with only 8.5 percent still in favor. This drastic change in mood is not difficult to fathom. Ukrainians have simply lost faith in Russia’s reliability as a neighbor and recognize that even a decisive victory in the current war will not end the existential threat coming from the Kremlin.
Anyone seeking to promote a negotiated peace must reckon with Ukrainian public opinion. After all, Ukraine is a robust democracy with a strong record of grassroots mobilization including two separate post-Soviet revolutions. Any attempt to impose a Kremlin-friendly compromise on the country would likely meet with strong resistance, even if accompanied by threats to end Western military aid.
Ukrainians will not let entire regions of their country be used as bargaining chips to appease Moscow’s imperial ambitions; nor will they condemn millions of their compatriots to the genocidal horrors of permanent Russian occupation. Instead, there is agreement across Ukraine that the whole country, including Crimea, must be liberated in order to achieve a meaningful peace.
Most Ukrainians view the Russian invasion as an old-fashioned imperial war of colonial conquest designed to wipe Ukraine off the map of Europe and force Ukrainians to abandon their national identity. They recognize the futility of negotiating with a leader who compares himself to Russian Czar Peter the Great and openly denies Ukraine’s right to exist. Instead, they will fight on for as long as it takes.
The international community appears to have reached a similar conclusion but continues to hesitate over sending Ukraine the weapons it needs in order to secure victory. With each successive delay, the war is prolonged and the price of defeating Putin rises higher.
Mariia Zolkina is a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and head of regional security and conflict studies at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation in Kyiv.
That too is a who cares. Why do you believe Americans owe anybody beyond our borders anything?
I don’t think we *owe* it. It is something we choose to do, or choose not to do given the situation and our circumstances.
It is like an individual who helps out someone else. Sometimes you choose to, sometimes you don’t.
Again, you are entitled to you own opinion, as am I and I do not agree with how you define *real* American.
The only thing the US political class has chosen is to entangle the US in foreign quarrels from which they make a lot of money or in which they play scummy political tricks with. The garbage that passes for our leaders are permitting a full invasion of the US in flat contradiction of Article 4 of the US Constitution while expending masses of money and equipment in a quarrel in eastern Europe without a scintilla of real vital interests for the people who work and pay taxes. People such as you love the bogus sentimentality and fake altruism the political scum to justify spending American wealth and lives in foreign disputes meaningless in a profound sense to this country. If you love these foreign quarrels so mush participate in them yourself. A number of US citizens have and a number of them are now dead. Step right up, these events obviously mean more to you than this country and its true citizens. Are you even an American? If so, how did you become one? If you were born here are you an anchor baby such as the wretched Ms Nimratu?
“In recent months, the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries has become a prominent force behind the incremental gains Russia has made in Ukraine.
“Dr. Leonid Petrov, an expert on Russian politics and postgraduate dean at Sydney International College of Management, said months ago in an interview published by SBS World News that he couldn’t foresee Putin’s war lasting much longer.
“Petrov told Newsweek that if Wagner isn’t successful in Ukraine, the group “is likely to destabilize the domestic situation in Russia and spark a civil war.”
You mean the America that paints a target on my back on a daily basis? The America that celebrates Satan in its popular media?
Ukrainians love the Ukraine that will shoot them down if they don’t rush off to fight and die for their oligarchs?
Not feeling a lot of love tonight.
I still do not agree with you LOL
Biden is part of NATO. The United STates is being dragged into the war in the Ukraine - over 100 billion tax payer dollars have already been thrown into the proxy war without accountability. Trump has said we shouldn’t be fighting, we should negotiate for peace.
So NATO, Biden sing in the choir - all of them chanting for war. Trump would end this, negotiate peace. Support for the war in the Ukraine is support for the deep state.
https://tass.com/world/1405555
10,000 Uke shells fell on Donbass from Jan 1 - Feb 22 2022 alone.
And yes, it was an arrestible crime to law flowers on WWII Russian war memorials or graves. Yes they passed laws outlawing the Russian language.
And whada you care? You aren’t an American. Aren’t you from Spain or something?
Ukrainians are united in rejection of any compromise with the Kremlin
By your logic we should have stayed out of WWII and let Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan take over any country they wanted to. None of our business, eh?
or a CIA poll
Zelenski and his Nazi mercenaries have no intention of making peace with Russia, it's not why they were installed there
peace was never the goal for Zelenski and Biden
Hell no. Biden won’t allow them to make peace. Their goal is to keep Biden’s blood money flowing freely. And the poll was the CIA’s or Victoria Nuland’s.
| In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Ukrainians are united in rejection of any compromise with the Kremlin, Right_Wing_Madman wrote: |
| Ukrainians are united in rejection of any compromise with the Kremlin I don't think this statement is true. But let's assume it is true, then this is good news for Russia. Why negotiate and set up conditions for a third Ukraine-Russia War later? Just finish off Ukraine for good. Ukrainians, at least the ones who don't escape to Europe and Russia, will eventually get representation in the Duma. RIP Ukraine 1991-2023. |
Zelensky and his handlers are not Ukrainian. They will expend all Ukrainian lives like rounds of ammo without hesitation. The Pentagon and others have advised Zelensky to withdraw from Bakmut, but Zelensky and/or his handlers don't have a plan B, they need this assault to work. They were trying to drain Russia of bullets/ weapons but are instead draining themselves. Putin has settled down to receive and destroy what the Ukrainians offer him in Bakmut - he doesn't have a strategic reason to leave and Zelensky/NATO will not negotiate peace. So yes, Putin will finish off the NATO troops and Ukrainian conscripts who enter the fight, with the intention of not having to repeat this war again. Putin wanted to negotiate, and since the Ukraine/NATO refuse, putin wants to end the threat. I fear the conscripts in the Ukraine are powerless to resist and the Ukraine will be missing the majority of men between the ages of 15 and at least 55. Not fair to those caught in the middle, but that is what is happening.
Amazing how after one year, one nation’s determination to defend itself from invasion receives so much hatred.
They are going to their deaths on their own.
The thing is - if they didn’t, then, just as in 1938, if the UK, US etc. didn’t get involved, then later there would be a big cost in American lives and bullion.
Sending surplus weapons to Ukraine saves American lives and bullion from the future
I find it incredible how there are folks who now seem to see Russia as "the only land for white people", as "more free than the USA" and "against globalism" etc. - those are real remarks from various pro-Putin folks on this very forum
Perfect! I really don’t care about a country used by the filthbag “elites” to glom unwarranted, insanely high “salaries” for themselves and their useless spawn. And I damn sure don’t care to have American taxpayers’ hard-earned cash shoveled into their pockets via a gay-dancing, corrupt, WEF-worshiping little scumbag.
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