December 27, 2023 - 11:00am
Addressing Ukrainian diplomats a few days ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy outlined his priorities for 2024. The themes were familiar: strengthening Ukraine’s air defences, gaining more weaponry from allies, and promoting his country’s entry into Nato and the EU.
However, there are far more significant challenges afflicting Ukraine’s leadership as the war-torn nation enters the new year. Top of the President’s in-tray in January will be the issue of mobilisation. A draft law published on Monday proposed lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25, while last week Defence Minister Rustem Umerov announced that Ukrainian men living abroad will receive an “invitation” to report for military duty, possibly accompanied by unspecified sanctions should they decline. Both moves are likely to be logistically difficult and unpopular, adding to the domestic dissent already seen last month when women took to Maidan Square demanding their husbands’ demobilisation.
What’s more, at his end-of-year conference on 19 December Zelenskyy said that his military commanders had “proposed to mobilise an additional 450,000 to 500,000 individuals”, including through conscription, for the war effort. While he added that he would require “specifics” and a “comprehensive plan”, Zelenskyy is unlikely to have any choice but to expand conscription. US officials note that Russia already has more troops, ammunition and missiles, with Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov warning that Russia may move to “total mobilisation” after the March presidential elections.
Another challenge for Ukraine is the task of constructing a new military strategy after the stalled counteroffensive. The New York Times reports that American and Ukrainian officials will work on this during exercises in Germany next month, but cracks have already emerged. Ukraine wants to go on the offensive, either on land or via the use of long-range strikes, but the US would prefer Kyiv to retain what territory it has and spend 2024 developing its weapon production capability, with the goal of bringing Russia to the negotiating table at the end of the year or in early 2025.
To make matters even more challenging, Zelenskyy is planning military strategy under severe pressure and amidst splits within the leadership. Moscow is on the offensive near Avdiivka and on Tuesday Ukraine admitted that it had withdrawn its troops from the town of Maryinka in Donetsk. The victory constitutes Russia’s most significant battlefield gain since Bakhmut in May and — according to President Vladimir Putin — means Russian troops are “pushing the enemy’s combat units away from Donetsk” and can now access “a broader operational space”.
Yet such concerns are paltry compared with the greater, more existential challenge of maintaining Western support. After the US Congress this month failed to approve $60billion of funding for Ukraine, efforts have moved to the Senate where Republican and Democrat negotiators have been trying to hammer out an agreement. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s frontline troops are stressing that a halt to US aid would lead to immediate military and civilian losses. Support from Europe has also been hit by difficulties, with Hungary this month blocking €50 billion of EU aid for Ukraine.
The situation will only become more perilous as the US presidential election approaches in November. With Donald Trump leading in the polls, it is highly doubtful that the likely Republican nominee would guarantee anywhere near the same level of support for Ukraine as Joe Biden. So while Zelenskyy will enter 2024 with a great many difficulties, they may be nothing compared to the troubles awaiting him thereafter.
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SubscribeAnd once the military-industrial complex has extracted all the treasure it can from this failed effort, the likes of Black Rock will arrive to cash in on the rebuild. Zelenskyy, by then, will either be in exile in one of the several villas US and EU taxpayers have purchased for him or face a less pleasant fate.
Trump, whatever one thinks of him, has been crystal clear on his aim – to stop the killing. Unlike Lindsay Graham, Chuck Schumer, and the others in Congress who keep blathering about “democracy,” Orange McBadman does not get gratification from seeing the young men of any country die. What a waste of life and what a sorry spectacle to watch a nation be needlessly destroyed.
It is not “a stalled offensive”, it is a strategic defeat .
I do not point this out with any “relish”.
Honesty, is the best policy for Ukraine.
The main reason for downed morale here in Ukraine, and the loss of interest by “west” , is the absolute BS (aka propoganda) in the reporting of this war.
The proposed call up of 500K is a shock in Ukraine, having been sold “victory in 2023” and “support for as long as it takes” by all and sundry.
Review the news, features, analyses and promises made across MSM concerning Ukraine. BS
I believe our brilliant leaders are in for a shock.
It is already clear that NATO has suffered a stinging, comprehensive defeat in Ukraine. The other shoe to drop will be when enough people in Ukraine realise that for NATO, Ukraine and the Ukrainians were ever only willing chumps, ruthlessly sacrificed for NATO’s ambitions. They’ll then turn to the only friend they’ve ever had – Russia. Besides, Russia is also the only one who can afford to rebuild Ukraine.
The question will be whether Poles and Balts will come to the same conclusion, especially since the US has deliberately holed the German economy below the waterline and so deprived these eager EU subsidies consumers of the goose that laid their golden eggs.
Interesting times…
If NATO has been stung Russia and Ukraine have been bloodied.
And a significant result has been earned. Ukraine has paid the price for existence. That is a good result.
Now they have to win the peace.
Why do they need to call up another 500K ?
Russia has a lot more men. All the high tech gadgets, missiles, drones and modern weapons can offset that advantage, but only so much, and only in certain types of conflicts. In traditional warfare where the goal is to seize and hold enemy territory, raw manpower is still the most important factor.
Modern weapons are most effective when they can be concentrated against enemy positions and overwhelm the defenders. The broader the area that has to be covered, the more weapons it will take to cover it, and the less that can be brought to bear in any one place. Ukraine could concentrate men and weapons into a small area of attack, but advancing in a few areas or a single area against an enemy with superior numbers is extremely risky. If Ukraine attacks a few places, the Russians can simply move left or right along the front and outflank the attackers, causing massive casualties and possibly even encircling them. It’s one of the oldest and most effective tactics in warfare. So instead they have to attack across very wide areas where the Russians are entrenched. In warfare, it’s always easier to defend than to attack.
No, Steve, the real answer is because they have lost 500K men
Well yes, that too, and Ukraine has a much lower population to draw from to begin with. It’s the same problem really. The numbers do not favor Ukraine and never have.
I assumed the blocked 50 bn euro was for aid, not arms. If it was for arms, why not say so?
I simply cannot be made to care about this nasty little grifter throwing his crime scene of a country into a for-profit war with Russia. His collusion with American corruptocrats have destroyed whatever advances post-SSR Ukraine achieved, and he likely knows his days are numbered.
What survives of Ukraine will return to Russia and look back on this short, tragic period with contempt. They should spit in the eye of the next American politician who waves dollars under the nose of worms like Zelensky.
The problem is that Ukraine is badly outnumbered at this point. Better weapons and more of them can overcome a disadvantage of numbers, but that was already tried. The offensive of last summer failed. Now they are facing manpower shortages and falling domestic support for continuing the war. The strategy suggested by the US, a defensive conflict to minimize losses and a focus on building up weapons manufacturing capacity makes a lot of sense from a sustainability perspective, but Zelensky can’t and shouldn’t rely upon it because a second Trump administration could back out entirely. Ukraine is not in a good position to negotiate, but their position isn’t likely to get much better, and it could get a lot worse. The time has come to take whatever can be gotten at the negotiation table and end the war with Ukraine ceding territory but retaining its sovereignty.
What better weapons ?
You’re deluded
The topic of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions is closed. They became part of the Russian Federation at the constitutional level. To assume that Putin will return them to Ukraine is the height of naivety and a complete misunderstanding of the goals of this war.
It’s easy to forget that this war has been going on for 10 years now. The Russian invasion was a major change in the war, true, but things have settled down to a stalemate not that much different than before that largely abortive move.
It’s easy to forget too that Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 as a peace president who would find a way to end the simmering war in eastern Ukraine. He has been unsuccessful at both war and peace.
Just entering NATO and the EU is not going to help much with Ukraine’s problems. Much better would be to end the war quickly with a peace plan along the lines of the Minsk accords. Crimea would stay Russian, and the Donbas would be part of Ukraine but largely autonomous. Ukraine would not join NATO but would get security guarantees from the West. EU membership would be left hanging.
Joe Biden has no talent to make a deal. In any event, he’s just dozing away his days in his assisted-living center, the White House. But we do have a master of the art of the deal waiting in the wings. Let’s hope he makes it to the stage before it’s too late.
Why on earth would Russia trust any deal with the West? The West, by Merkel’s own admission, simply used the Minsk Agreements as cover to arm Ukraine and never intended that they be complied with…ever.
And why would any sane government give security guarantees to Ukraine which was a corrupt basket case before the war, and is even more of one now?
And why would the vast number of Ukrainians who have fled the country go back to an impoverished devastated country where elections are banned and a dictatorship can press gang the people? Quite simply, they won’t.
Russia will ignore the West, which will in any event grow tired of Ukraine. Why should Western taxpayers fund Ukraine when the West can’t even solve its own multiple problems? They won’t much longer.
We don’t have the ships, we don’t have the men and we don’t have the money too…and we don’t care if the Bear gets Ukraine.
Never, ever, underestimate the Russian capacity for taking one for their country. This terrible war could and should have been avoided, Ukraine would have lost lands and people but they will anyway. Zelenskyy is a puppet, started out fine but then sold out.
Tragic for Russia and the Ukraine, great for weapon manufacturers and undertakers.