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As we enter a new year and the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its third year, many on both sides of the Atlantic are wondering whether Ukraine has a chance of winning the war in 2024 or whether a peace deal can be reached. I want to know. Last year, I accurately predicted that Europe’s largest and bloodiest war since World War II would reach its “hottest phase” in 2023. This is my assessment for 2024.
The Russian government is likely to escalate hostilities in the first quarter of this year, aiming to force Kiev to surrender in the run-up to President Vladimir Putin’s re-election in March. Neither Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy nor the Biden administration are likely to hand Putin such a clear victory, losing face in the process by signing a peace deal on Putin’s terms.
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Border guards on the front lines of the trenches in Bakhmut, Ukraine, December 26, 2022. Large areas of the Donetsk region have been occupied by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. (Pierre Krom/Getty Images)
Alternatively, and more likely, neither Moscow, Kiev, nor Washington will compromise. In this case, the conflict will continue until the level of decline in Ukraine’s human resources reaches a threshold that is no longer acceptable to the population (probably in the summer or early fall) or until the US government stops sending arms and funds to Kiev. . At that point, active combat operations will gradually transition to low-intensity combat, with occasional flare-ups. By 2025, the conflict will be “frozen” and no formal peace agreement will be reached.
Contrary to the expectations of President Biden and the Washington establishment, and tragically for Ukrainians, victory in Kiev remains mathematically impossible. This is the basis of my analysis.
Russia has overwhelming military and economic superiority over the former Soviet Union’s satellites. Since the start of the war, Russia has maintained overwhelming military and economic superiority over the former Soviet Union’s satellites. Despite the courage of its people and occasional tactical successes, such as Tuesday’s missile attack that damaged a Russian warship in the occupied port of Feodosia in Crimea, Ukraine remains strategically in a stalemate with Russia and is facing attrition. We continue to fight a losing battle.
There’s a reason the Pentagon considers Russia a “nearly peer competitor.” According to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the Ukraine war hasn’t changed that view. Kendall said last year that although the Russian military has experienced logistics and command and control problems in Ukraine, the military’s plans to counter Russia have not changed and still calls for modernization of U.S. combat weapons. admitted that.
Although Russia has suffered heavy losses in Ukraine over the past 20 months, the Russian military remains extremely well-resourced in manpower and material. President Putin is preparing for a long war with Russia, one he believes Russia will emerge victorious from.
Ukrainian soldiers in a trench under Russian artillery fire near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)
A lawyer with a Ph.D. In the field of economics, President Putin has long since begun to put Russia’s economy on a war footing and make it more resistant to sanctions. In 2015, seven years before troops besieged Ukraine in February 2022, President Putin declared a so-called “special period.” This is a legal system that allows the Russian state to oblige factories to switch production from civilian goods to military goods such as missiles. , drones and tanks.
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On November 24, 2022, Ukrainians fire rockets at Russian military positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. (AP Photo/LIBKOS, File)
Since 2014, when the first U.S. sanctions were imposed on Russia after Russia invaded Crimea, Ukraine, President Putin has reduced the dollar strength of Russia’s state-owned investment fund, the Sovereign Wealth Fund, and weakened the Chinese yuan. The euro has begun to prioritize gold. He increased Russia’s foreign exchange reserves to a record $630 billion. As of October, the fund remained at $563 billion. President Putin recently doubled Russia’s 2023 defense budget to more than $100 billion, the highest level since Soviet times. Russia’s “commander-in-chief” is directing an ever-larger portion of state revenues to the war effort.
Conversely, Ukraine relies heavily on Western funding for its survival. According to the World Bank, Ukraine’s GDP in 2023 was $155 billion. Mr. Biden is currently requesting $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, equivalent to 40% of GDP. However, according to the White House, US aid to Ukraine will expire at the end of this month. And it is entirely uncertain whether Congress will approve new policies for Kiev upon its return from vacation in January. The conflict between conservative Republicans, the Biden administration and Democrats over tightening border security as a condition for aid to Ukraine shows no signs of resolving.
Money from the United States and some European countries not only pays for arms supplies to Ukraine, but also pays for salaries of government employees, school teachers, university professors, health workers, and private expenditures such as housing subsidies. As a result, without foreign funding, Ukraine’s economy and society will likely collapse, and its defense operations against Russia will likely end within weeks.
A Ukrainian soldier fires a D-30 howitzer at a Russian military position near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, March 21, 2023. (Sergey Shestak/AFP via Getty Images)
Disparities in human resources also undoubtedly favor Russia. According to recently declassified U.S. intelligence estimates, Moscow has lost about 315,000 troops, or 87% of its troops, killed or seriously injured, but Putin has kept the military at bay throughout the conflict, including through covert mobilization measures. I’ve been replenishing it. The Russian military will increase its strength by 170,000 soldiers, bringing its maximum strength to 1.32 million. In order to attract more warm-hearted organizations to fight for Mother Russia, the Russian government is paying a staggering 1 million rubles (approximately $11,000) in contract fees.
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Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military is nearing breaking point. Losses in Kiev are approaching 200,000 dead or seriously injured. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is 43 years old, and the population is aging rapidly. Not only are these soldiers exhausted from nearly two years of bloody combat, but many are no longer physically able to withstand the demands of the battlefield. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, a 47-year-old former electrician and front-line Ukrainian soldier lamented, “I can’t physically handle this.”
Lacking an effective mobilization system, Ukrainian recruiters are using physical violence and intimidation, including grabbing men on the streets, to replenish their troops, according to the New York Times. That’s what it means. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants to conscript 500,000 additional soldiers to fight Russia, and is asking for $13.4 billion to do so, but it remains unclear how he intends to achieve this goal. It is unknown. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, Ukraine’s long-awaited counterattack has failed and Russia continues to gain momentum and destroy critical infrastructure and defense industrial facilities in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin vows to strengthen Russia’s military cooperation with its allies at the Army International Military-Technical Forum held in Patriot Park outside Moscow on August 15, 2022. (Sputnik, Kremlin pool photo, via AP)
Putin is confident that his country is outmatched and outclassed by its enemies, smells blood, and calls for Ukraine’s complete surrender. “If we achieve our goals, there will be peace,” Putin said at his recent four-hour press conference. Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, wrote on his Twitter account two weeks ago that Zelenskyy was “blown away.” [Ukraine’s] Mr. Polyansky cited Germany’s “complete and unconditional surrender” to the Soviet Union in 1945 as an example, and concluded that “any possible agreement” would mirror Ukraine’s “surrender.”
President Putin suggested on December 8 that continued Western aid to Ukraine would force Russia to negotiate favorable terms for Kiev by the end of 2024, according to US national security official Jonathan Finner. He openly mocked the deputy security assistant’s comment. “In the future,” Putin said, according to Izvestia news agency. “Their defense capabilities are running dry. They don’t have their own base, and when they don’t have their own base, their own ideology, their own industry, their own money, their own nothing, there’s no future. . . . And we have it.” These are not the words of a worried leader.
It may be tempting to dismiss comments from former KGB operatives as propaganda. But if we consider the situation frankly, whether it’s about Afghanistan or Ukraine, the Washington establishment seems incapable of doing so, but Putin is better than Zelensky, who continues to accept nothing but victory. much more realistic. “No one believes in our victory more than I do,” Zelenskiy recently told Time magazine.
President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet at the White House. (Office of the President of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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Mr. Zelensky is right. No one with common sense believes that Ukraine can defeat Russia, whose population is three times that of Ukraine. So the Kremlin can throw meat into the meat grinder long after the last Ukrainian has died. Even the US media, which has been blindly cheering Ukraine on for the past two years rather than providing objective analysis, is confident that Putin’s war machine will likely outlast Zelensky’s weapons and Western support. I almost admit that.
No matter how hard the Washington establishment tries to fabricate the numbers, math doesn’t lie.
Unfortunately, next year – just like last year and years ago with the “forever war” in Afghanistan – Team Biden will continue to try to squeeze billions more out of us, and Ukraine’s victory is just around the corner. I promise you it is. corner. This magical thinking will almost certainly lead to more bloodshed, death, and destruction for Ukraine and Ukrainians in 2024.
Click here to read more from Rebecca Koffler
