June 30, 2022
Time Is No One’s Friend in Ukraine. While murmurings of peace talks seem to have all but disappeared, all sides seem to be playing the clock. Resolve is hardening on both sides and even the recent prisoner swap of 144 Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom defended the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, feels less like an advance towards peace and more as a harbinger of the entrenchment of a long war.
Russia intent to wait out the West with its brutal and indiscriminate campaign in the Donbas seemed ever-more misguided this week as it defaulted on its foreign debt and G7 leaders reiterated in word and deed their united resolve to support Ukraine and punish Russia. Then at the NATO Summit, members took measures to both expand NATO by supporting the applications of Finland and Sweden and announcing a decision to boost its numbers of deployed troops seven-fold. Moreover, reports on the dearth of semiconductor exports to Russia indicate that there will be severe impact to its military and commercial aviation sectors. These are strategic realignments that will have reverberations for years to come, but while these shifts occur Ukraine continues to be assailed relentlessly.
Putin appears unmoved by any of it as indicated by the launching a rocket into Kiev at the start of the G7 meetings to underscore his doggedness. The negotiations to release Ukrainian grain stores at a critical time to make room for the summer harvest also seem at an impasse as the global food shortage serves Russia’s strategic aims. Putin is counting that he can break the West with soaring inflation and energy costs and a possible influx of refugees into Europe. Eventually, he hopes a protracted war will weaken popular support for Ukraine and create cleavages in the Western alliance. In the interim, Russia seems to have taken aim at Europe’s new primary gas provider, Norway, as Russian-based criminal elements launched a series of Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber-attacks against a slew of Norwegian public institutions.
However, U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Putin’s campaign in Ukraine has profoundly degraded his forces and while he still would like to take the whole of Ukraine, he probably will only be able to make incremental gains like the recent advance on Severodonesk. And even those gains are ephemeral as illustrated by Russia’s retreat today from the strategic and symbolic outcrop of Snake Island in the Black Sea. This tug and pull will endure for the foreseeable future.
June 30, 2022
Time Is No One’s Friend in Ukraine. While murmurings of peace talks seem to have all but disappeared, all sides seem to be playing the clock. Resolve is hardening on both sides and even the recent prisoner swap of 144 Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom defended the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, feels less like an advance towards peace and more as a harbinger of the entrenchment of a long war.
Russia intent to wait out the West with its brutal and indiscriminate campaign in the Donbas seemed ever-more misguided this week as it defaulted on its foreign debt and G7 leaders reiterated in word and deed their united resolve to support Ukraine and punish Russia. Then at the NATO Summit, members took measures to both expand NATO by supporting the applications of Finland and Sweden and announcing a decision to boost its numbers of deployed troops seven-fold. Moreover, reports on the dearth of semiconductor exports to Russia indicate that there will be severe impact to its military and commercial aviation sectors. These are strategic realignments that will have reverberations for years to come, but while these shifts occur Ukraine continues to be assailed relentlessly.
Putin appears unmoved by any of it as indicated by the launching a rocket into Kiev at the start of the G7 meetings to underscore his doggedness. The negotiations to release Ukrainian grain stores at a critical time to make room for the summer harvest also seem at an impasse as the global food shortage serves Russia’s strategic aims. Putin is counting that he can break the West with soaring inflation and energy costs and a possible influx of refugees into Europe. Eventually, he hopes a protracted war will weaken popular support for Ukraine and create cleavages in the Western alliance. In the interim, Russia seems to have taken aim at Europe’s new primary gas provider, Norway, as Russian-based criminal elements launched a series of Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber-attacks against a slew of Norwegian public institutions.
However, U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Putin’s campaign in Ukraine has profoundly degraded his forces and while he still would like to take the whole of Ukraine, he probably will only be able to make incremental gains like the recent advance on Severodonesk. And even those gains are ephemeral as illustrated by Russia’s retreat today from the strategic and symbolic outcrop of Snake Island in the Black Sea. This tug and pull will endure for the foreseeable future.
