“Ukraine – Russia”

With the Ukraine conflict languishing in stalemate, the possibility that Russian president Vladimir Putin might yet emerge victorious from his ill-judged invasion cannot be ignored, with all the implications such an outcome would have for Europe’s security.

Ukraine’s failure to make a decisive breakthrough in its counter-offensive during the summer has all but silenced the optimistic predictions made by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his senior commanders that victory was within Kyiv’s grasp. Instead, the Ukrainian narrative is in danger of descending into recriminations over the refusal of its Western allies to provide Kyiv with the weaponry required to break the impasse on the battlefield. As the Ukrainian leader remarked in a recent interview, “We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted, I can’t be satisfied.”

The Kremlin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin warned the U.S. that Ukraine will turn into its “second Vietnam,” amid disagreement in Congress over funding for Kyiv.

“Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing more and more resources and people,” Russian foreign intelligence chief Naryshkin said Thursday in a written statement published by his agency’s house journal, the Intelligence Operative.

“Ultimately, the U.S. risks creating a ‘second Vietnam’ for itself, and every new American administration will have to deal with it,” he added.

A German research body that tracks donations to Ukraine says the value of pledges fell almost 90 per cent between Autumn 2022 and 2023, with levels dwindling since this Summer, around the time of Kyiv’s ‘Spring Offensive’.

Kyiv has been through a lot over more than 21 months of war, fighting off the invading Russian army and surviving the regular cruise missile attacks and electricity blackouts that followed.

But the political machinations in the Ukrainian capital in recent weeks nonetheless feel unprecedented.

KYIV — More than 21 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine the mood is turning grim in Kyiv — with tensions between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, spilling into the open.

Last year’s successes, as Ukraine first blunted Russia’s attacks on its capital and then recaptured swaths of territory, have faded into a stalemate along hundreds of kilometers of frontlines as entrenched Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fight bloody battles for advances and retreats measured in meters.

When offered the chance to renew a free trade deal with Ukraine, a country that had no choice but to take on a mountain of debt to finance a bitter fight for self-defence, the Liberals couldn’t help but inject it with progressive nods to social and carbon policies. In the words of critics, the deal is “woke.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted last week that his country’s 2023 counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results,” and that “we have a new phase of war.” Russian strongman Vladimir Putin could have said the exact same thing this time last year after his country was forced to retreat from huge swaths of occupied Ukraine.

So what can we learn from each side’s successes and failures?

Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is falling and he will pay for his mistakes by eventually losing power, the mayor of Kyiv Vladimir Klitschko has said.

In a startling rebuke of Ukraine’s president, Mr Klitschko told two interviewers that he considered Mr Zelensky to be increasingly isolated and autocratic.

“People see who’s effective and who’s not. And there were and still are a lot of expectations. Zelensky is paying for mistakes he has made,” he said in an interview with the Swiss news website 20 Minutes.

Thirsting for a bit of good news in these bad times of war, Ukraine’s media headlined what it saw as a victory: The return to Kiev of a haul of artefacts from Crimea that had been on exhibit in European cities before Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The return came after a ten-year legal battle in which Russia claimed that it should receive the artefacts because they were made before the 1950s when the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev “handed Crimea over to Ukraine.” Ukraine counter-argued that the artefacts were loaned to a Dutch museum before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops annexed Crimea.

Well, in every war even the tiniest bit of good news could help divert attention, even momentarily, from bigger bad news.

President Zelensky has admitted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive against invading Russian forces did not achieve the success he had hoped for.

“We wanted faster results,” the Ukrainian leader said during a visit to the Kharkiv region in the north east of the country. “From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.”

Ukraine will not surrender land to Russia in exchange for Nato membership, its foreign minister said, as a US official predicted that President Putin was unlikely to consider calling off his invasion until next year’s American presidential elections.

“We have to continue, we have to keep fighting. Ukraine is not going to back down,” Dmytro Kuleba told Nato foreign ministers in Brussels. He said Kyiv remained committed to recapturing all its land, including Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by the Kremlin almost a decade ago. He expressed frustration at the speed with which western countries were delivering weapons to Ukraine.

More … NATO Unity Tested Over Ukraine War

The United States and Germany are in talks over an effort to persuade Ukraine to negotiate a peace deal with Russia broadly along the lines of the present battle front, according to a report.

The two largest states in Nato and Kyiv’s biggest military backers are said to be deliberately limiting arms deliveries to make it clear to President Zelensky that the conflict is now “frozen”.