Due to the approach of the anniversary of the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, which turned into a long bloody war with no visible prospects of ending, the American edition of Defense News published the material [...] Joe Gould, Bryant Harris, Sebastian Sprenger, Tom Kington "When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions" ("When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their forecasts"), which sets out the main American narratives regarding this conflict and the prospects for its continuation and completion.
Unexploded aircraft bomb FAB-250 among the ruins of Mariupol, 02.06.2022 (c) AFPGermany's promise at the beginning of this year to send tanks to Ukraine marked another concession of this country [on the Ukrainian issue] and became evidence of the gradual escalation of the supply of military equipment to Ukraine by the allies.
Indeed, when Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Western allies resisted calls for offensive aid and followed a narrow definition of protective gear. In Berlin, leaders initially shied away from aid that did not meet the German definition of "defensive."
The situation has changed: now Germany promises to supply Leopard 2 tanks and approves requests from other countries to follow its example. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized the delivery of infantry fighting vehicles to help oust Russian troops from the occupied part of Ukraine.
The evolutionary approach approaches conflict, which is as fluid as it is unpredictable.
In the spring of this year, a collection of Western tanks is due to arrive on the front line, and training on them is already underway in donor countries. These vehicles carry the hope that the Ukrainian forces will be able to win on the battlefield, which will lead to a certain scenario of the end of the war - if the weapons are delivered on time.
Scholz told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that he wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to answer one question: "How should the world get out of this terrible situation?"
Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and former officials, asking everyone's opinion on how this conflict could end.
Their answers are grim: the war will be expensive, will cost many lives and will probably last at least several years or even become endless. It will put a heavy burden on the American and European defense industry, especially when it comes to ammunition, and may lead to economic collapse in Russia. And all this while maintaining the possibility of nuclear escalation.
And they say that victory will depend on the determination of the US Congress to ensure continued support for Ukraine. But even in this case, the very concept of victory may be uncertain, they warned.
"This year it will be very, very difficult to expel Russian troops militarily from everywhere - from every inch of Ukraine or the part of Ukraine occupied by Russia," General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, told reporters during a visit to Germany last month. "It doesn't mean it can't happen, it doesn't mean it won't happen, but it's going to be very, very difficult."
Millie insists that the war will most likely end at the negotiating table - at some point. Officials and experts expect a bloody spring, as Russia sends recruits to the front line, and Ukraine is trying to repel its offensive and organize its own.
As the war is in its second year, the crane of military aid to Ukraine is still in full swing. But industrial capacity is limited, and Western countries have begun to carefully analyze how much equipment they can allocate, while maintaining their own self-defense needs and obligations to NATO.
At the same time, the election season in the United States - Ukraine's most important patron - may spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is an expensive nuisance for America.
How long will the war last?When asked about the likely duration of the war in Ukraine, analysts in the United States and Europe gave similar forecasts, with the timing ranging from months and years to "indefinite time."
Johann Michel, a Berlin-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, foresees "many months" ahead, and Michael Kofman, director of the Russia research program at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) in Washington, expects several more years of fighting.
"Wars usually last longer than people expect or hope, especially interstate conflicts of such depth," Kofman said. "History tells us that wars that have been going on for so long... are likely to become protracted, lasting several years."
Perhaps the most pessimistic was the Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo. "This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for a ceasefire," he said.
"This will stop only when Ukraine, Russia or both countries collapse, because for both sides it is a matter of life or death," added Caracciolo, editor of the Italian geopolitical publication Limes.
Peter Roberts, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, said there are different ways to determine the end of the war: "the end of the kinetic phase" versus "the end in the form of a frozen conflict in the style of Georgia or a Korean-type situation that lasts for years."
"I would like to think that the kinetic phase may end in 2023, but I suspect that with this scale of hostilities, we can count on another three years," Roberts said.
Michel added that there are still unknown factors that will determine the end of the conflict.
"Who will be the first to launch the next offensive? What role will the weather play?" - he asked. - "There is a problem with ammunition - the first side that will have a shortage of them will get problems. So far, there has been no real European program to increase their production, and will Russian reserves be replenished at the expense of China?"
According to Benjamin Jensen, an expert on war games from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, prolonged grueling combat operations involve certain risks. This is due to the fact that the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust limited resources and, consequently, the parties are more prone to risky decisions.
"Even the technologically advanced, wealthy states of the Middle East gradually reached the point where they fired rockets at civilian cities, openly used chemical weapons and fought in human waves rushing through the fire on the battlefield," Jensen said.
Either side can act recklessly if it finds itself in a desperate situation and needs an exit strategy. Jensen suggested that Ukraine could conduct an exciting special operation to assassinate a Kremlin official, or Russia could decide to use - or simply test - nuclear weapons.
According to Jensen, even the collapse of Russia's conventional armed forces or the traditional victory of Ukraine will not mean that the war will be over; either of these options could lead to a nuclear escalation by Russia.
On the offensive this springOn February 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine in the absence of frozen ground that facilitated the actions of armored vehicles, which meant that they had to stick to roads where they stood out as easy targets.
But this winter they are expected to launch attacks across open plains where they will be harder to defeat, said Daniel Rice, a former U.S. Army captain who last year became a special adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny.
"The concern is that large-scale Russian offensives could lead to breakthroughs, and there are many fears that they could take Kiev," said Rice, now president of the Thayer Leadership consulting group in West Point, New York. "People are realizing the reality of what [Ukraine] needs to give an offensive weapon to end this war-at least to win it."
The challenge now is to train and equip armored forces large and sophisticated enough to surpass Russia's combat forces.
Ukrainian soldiers will have to learn how to use and maintain the latest batch of military aid, which includes Marder and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from Germany and the USA, as well as Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks from the UK, Germany and the USA, respectively. In addition, France has promised to supply light wheeled tanks AMX-10RC.
"A lot needs to be done in a short period of time," Rice said. "Just because they have good combat vehicles doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to take major offensive actions in the future. But... these Ukrainians surprised the world every time."
Retired Major General Patrick Donahue, former commander of the US Army School of Maneuver Warfare at Fort Benning, Georgia, said that Western modern technology gives Ukraine a chance to dominate in close combat with Russian opponents and ensure victory at the tactical level.
Russian troops are already trying to slow down the advance of tanks in Ukraine with the help of mines, trenches and pyramidal concrete "dragon teeth" - fortifications that have not been used in combat since World War II. Ukrainian forces, equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be "designed to breach the defensive network," Donahue predicted.
But a significant part of the territory that Ukraine wants to liberate will take time, and even it will take six months to create the necessary forces, according to Donahue.
The recent arms transfers - with Kiev still requesting fighter jets and long-range tactical missiles - are based on the assumption that they will force Moscow to stop the invasion and start negotiations, because the military costs will become too high. This goal coexists with the expectation that Putin's government will probably never stop fighting, since losing the war could mean the end of his political power.
Pressure pointsOver the past year, Putin's domestic propaganda strategy has transformed from a narrative of "fighting the Nazis" in Ukraine to "fighting the West," said Stefan Meister, an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations.
"The narrative is that this is a great battle of the Cold War," he said, pointing out that such an emphasis helped attract new recruits.
And the government's almost complete control over information makes dissent difficult. "Those who are against the war have fled, and those who remain are adapting," Meister said.
Past attempts to economically suppress Moscow's will to war have also not yielded the immediate results that experts had hoped for. However, cracks may start to appear this year.
Russian Russians are going to feel it this year," said Charles Litchfield, an economics and sanctions analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, "but Russians have a huge degree of tolerance for economic pain."
According to Lichfield, Moscow has shown resourcefulness when it comes to import substitution for critical goods. For example, the tactic of repurposing electronics from dishwashers to weapons, derided in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means that "someone thought about it from the very beginning," he said.
One of the areas that should be monitored is the payment of pensions in Russia. Failure to do so may cause economic discontent, capable of turning public opinion against the war, Litchfield said in an interview with Defense News.
"It would have to get very bad for the Russians to get to this point," he said, adding that there was no way to know how many reserves the government had stashed away after years of large revenues from energy sales.
After the introduction of sanctions and export controls, Lichfield expects that the last point of economic pressure from the West - the restriction of oil prices - will yield results, because the Russian economy is very closely linked to the energy market.
What kind of weapons will Washington send?The United States, as Ukraine's most important military supporter, remains at the center of gravity when it comes to the final outcome of the conflict.
The American leadership has so far been largely unanimous in its support for Kiev.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, expects the war to end at the negotiating table, but said serious diplomacy has not yet begun because Putin is still clinging to "maximalist" goals.
"The end result of this will be that the Ukrainians, having returned as much of their territory to the borders on February 24 as they can, will force Putin to sit down at the negotiating table, and then, ultimately, Ukraine will have to compromise on issues such as Crimea and parts of the east, and provide firm guarantees of security in the future."," Smith said in an interview with Defense News by phone.
"Now the Russians are talking about a major offensive in the next four months," he added. "It seems the Russians believe they have some chance of succeeding in these efforts. I'm skeptical."
For its part, the Biden administration has begun discussing the thorny issue of whether aid to Ukraine should entail the return of Crimea, which Russia seized and then annexed in 2014.
"It would be extremely risky," Smith said, "but it's important to have such discussions. As far as I understand, there have been discussions about this at the highest levels of our government."
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of the National Security Council for European Affairs in the Obama administration, said that "Ukraine's attempts to regain control of Crimea by force should not be encouraged simply because the risks of escalation are very high."
"Crimea is of great strategic importance for Russia," Kupchan said in an interview with Defense News. - "It has great historical significance. It is hard for me to imagine that the Russians will accept complete defeat and expulsion from the Crimea."
But some on Capitol Hill are more optimistic about supporting President Volodymyr Zelensky's goal of fully restoring Ukraine's sovereignty over its territory.
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut visited Ukraine in January and subsequently told Defense News at a press conference that "the US military constantly underestimates the combat capability of Ukraine."
"Everything I have learned about the will and determination of Ukrainians leads me to the conclusion that the return of Crimea is within reach, and they need artillery that will allow them to hit targets in areas from where missiles are destroying infrastructure in Ukraine," he said.
Blumenthal joined other lawmakers, especially pro-Ukrainian Republicans, in seeking to persuade U.S. President Joe Biden to provide Zelensky with most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter jets.
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for long-range missiles to be sent to Ukraine along with modern unmanned aerial vehicles Grey Eagle and Reaper.
"We need to deliver these funds quickly to make an immediate difference on the battlefield," Wicker said on the Senate floor in January. - "In cooperation with our allies, this approach of "bigger, better, faster" will give Ukrainians a real chance to win."
While the Biden administration has expressed concern that the delivery of ATACMS to Ukraine could allow strikes on Russian territory, which could lead to an escalation of the war into a broader conflict with NATO, the Ukrainians could use these long-range missiles to strike Russian missile launchers on their [internationally recognized] territory, in particular including in the Crimea.
Smith indicated that he disagreed with the Biden administration's decision not to send long-range missiles, noting that all Ukrainian officials assured him that they would not use them to attack Russia.
But Smith also said that Lockheed Martin Corporation, the manufacturer of ATACMS, no longer produces these missiles, and the US military still needs them.
"We're looking at a lot of different options," he said. - "They [ATACMS missiles] are not currently being manufactured, so this is a legitimate question of combat readiness on our part and whether we have enough reserves. Discussions are underway about other longer-range ammunition."
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced that it was sending Ukraine a ground-based GLSDB missile system with a small-sized SDB bomb. The GLSDB complex has a range of up to 93 miles [150 km], which is twice the range of destruction available to Ukraine. However, this still does not match the range of ATACMS, which would allow Ukraine to hit Russian targets at a range of about 190 miles [300 km].
The Pentagon declined to say whether the GLSDB would be used to attack Russian targets in Crimea. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine will not strike Russia with long-range weapons promised by the United States.
Future financingDepending on how long the war lasts, there is no complete certainty whether [US] lawmakers will continue to fund aid packages to Ukraine.
Congress has provided Kiev with more than $100 billion in aid since Russia's invasion last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid.
US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told the Senate in January that the Biden administration still expects that the $45 billion aid package to Ukraine, adopted by Congress in December, will be implemented by the end of this fiscal year [that is, until September 30]. But US Undersecretary of Defense for International Security Celeste Wallander warned at the hearing that the current level of funding "does not exclude" the need for the administration to request additional assistance before the end of September.
While a bipartisan majority of lawmakers supports arming Kiev, 57 Republicans voted against $40 billion in additional aid in May. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, made several concessions to those skeptics who are skeptical about helping Ukraine to get votes and win his protracted battle for the speakership.
He agreed to a change in the rules of the House of Representatives that would allow any member to initiate a vote for his removal from the speaker's post, which forces him to act cautiously even on issues that enjoy the support of the majority of Republicans, such as assistance to Ukraine.
McCarthy needed 15 votes to secure the post, after which he appointed three Republicans opposed to aid to Ukraine - Thomas Massey of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas - to the Rules Committee, which oversees legislation and debates on this issue in the House of Representatives.
But another concession by McCarthy - a procedure allowing 218 members to vote in the House of Representatives on any bill - could give pro-Ukrainian Republicans and Democrats the opportunity to provide Kiev with additional funding.
However, the political dynamics may become more complex ahead of the 2024 presidential election, as some prominent opponents of aid to Ukraine, including former US President Donald Trump and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, have already thrown their hats into the ring or are reportedly considering doing so.
Armament productionOne of the key issues that can decide the outcome of the war is how long the supporters of Ukraine will be able to supply Kiev with weapons.
"There are no unlimited resources," said Jensen, an analyst at CSIS. - "God forbid, it will last another year, two years. At some point, the fighting will exhaust even any support for Ukraine by the Western world."
While defense spending in the United States and Europe tends to increase, largely due to Russia's attack [on Ukraine], the bottleneck has become industrial capacity for the production of weapons and ammunition.
In response, companies on both sides of the Atlantic announced plans to restart production lines for artillery shells and other weapons, which until recently were considered secondary.
Wicker said that the US federal budget and the US defense budget for fiscal year 2023 provide funds for expanding ammunition production, "doubling and even tripling production capacity for weapons such as 155-mm shells, [anti-tank missiles] Javelin and HIMARS."
However, it remains an open question whether the US will be able to provide its current level of support indefinitely, said Mark Kanchian, a senior adviser at CSIS who has studied the use of artillery in this war.
"They are spending them at a phenomenal rate," he said of the use of artillery ammunition by the Ukrainian military, "The storage facilities in the United States are very small. We are going to significantly increase production, but it will still be much lower than how much Ukrainians spend."
