#Kreminna

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Cinema in Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. 1970s.

[stop-war-ukraine]

Aftermath of the “Russian world”.

The Ukrainian cities of Mariupol, Bakhmut, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Vuhledar, Lyman, Vovchansk, Volnovakha, Marinka, Kreminna... Toretsk has now joined this far from complete list of cities turned into ruins after the start of t🇷🇺 invasion

[sauolasa]

Ucraina: la battaglia della Kreminna

Feroci combattimenti per il controllo del cuore del Donbass

[captain-price-unofficially]

Kreminna forest, Ukraine 2024 (above) and Verdun, France 1918

[mariacallous]

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin continues to demonstrate that he is not interested in negotiating a ceasefire and remains focused on the total destruction of Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote on Oct. 31.

This conclusion was drawn after Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's interview with Bloomberg on Oct. 30, in which he recalled his recent conversation with Putin and an attempt to discuss with him Russia's war against Ukraine and the possibility of a ceasefire. However, the Russian dictator made it clear that Russia would continue to pursue its goals in the war.

"All the goals of the special military operation, as he put it, will be achieved," Vučić quoted Putin.

The ISW stresses that these goals outlined by Putin ultimately mean the destruction of the Ukrainian state and government. He had previously rejected any ceasefire agreement during a press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in July 2024, claiming that it would allow Ukraine to regroup and rearm.

A hypothetical ceasefire under the current circumstances would only benefit Russia, giving Moscow time to further radicalize and militarize Russian society against Ukraine, as well as allowing the Russian army to rest and recover before possibly launching a new attack in the future.

The ISW also reported on the continuing Russian offensive in the Kupyansk, Svatove, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar sectors of the front. Russian troops have advanced southeast of Kupyansk and west of Svatove, as well as along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line. Footage published on Oct. 31 also indicates advances in Stelmakhivka and Kruhlyakivka villages, suggesting that the Russians have likely captured these areas.

At the same time, Ukrainian forces have regained positions in a wooded area southwest of Pobeda, southeast of Kurakhove.

There are also indications that Russian troops may have captured Novoukrainka, northwest of Vuhledar. The ISW has geolocation-confirmed footage showing the Russian 40th Marine Brigade advancing into the central part of Novoukrainka.

While Russian sources claim to have captured Yasna Polyana, northwest of Vuhledar, the ISW has no evidence to support this claim.

[argumate]

Russian forces appear to have increased the number and size of mechanized ground assaults on select sectors of the frontline within the past two weeks, marking a notable overall increase in Russian mechanized assaults across the theater. Ukrainian officials stated on March 20 that Ukrainian forces repelled a large Russian assault in the Lyman direction and published geolocated footage showing Ukrainian forces damaging or destroying several Russian armored vehicles east of Terny (west of Kreminna). Ukrainian forces later defeated a battalion-sized Russian mechanized assault near Tonenke (west of Avdiivka) on March 30 to which Russian forces reportedly committed at least 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs). A Ukrainian serviceman stated that Ukrainian forces destroyed 12 Russian tanks and eight IFVs during the assault near Tonenke, and Russian forces have likely only conducted one other mechanized assault of that scale along the entire frontline since the beginning of the Russian campaign to seize Avdiivka in October 2023, which was also near Terny on January 20. Geolocated footage published on April 3 shows Ukrainian forces repelling a roughly reinforced platoon-sized mechanized Russian assault near Terny. The April 3 footage is likely recent and is distinct from the March 20 footage of Russian assaults near Terny. Russian forces may be intensifying mechanized assaults before muddy terrain becomes more pronounced in the spring and makes mechanized maneuver warfare more difficult. Russian forces may also be intensifying mechanized assaults to take advantage of Ukrainian materiel shortages before the arrival of expected Western security assistance.

the war, as insane as it may be, continues

[engin-program]

🌟 Meet Vladyslava Bilous! 🌟

👱🏻‍♀️ Vladyslava, 23, is from Kreminna in the Luhansk Region. After her home was occupied by russia in 2022, she moved to Kyiv and has been there for the past 4 years. Currently, she works at a creative agency that produces content for UNITED24 media, a platform dedicated to revealing the truth about the war and combating powerful russian propaganda.

💪 Vladyslava is seeking to enhance her skills with ENGin to communicate more effectively and make her content more engaging. Her friend, who works for a governmental charity organization, introduced her to ENGin, and she immediately recognized the value of this initiative.

✨ The most significant aspect of ENGin for Vladyslava is the opportunity to converse with native speakers, allowing her to learn new phrases and apply them to her work. She is excited about the prospect of learning about different cultures, broadening her horizons, and sharing more about Ukraine with the world.

🌐 Join us as an ENGin volunteer and become a buddy for someone like Vladyslava! Together, we can make a difference. 💬🌏🇺🇦

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Destroyed Russian T-72BA main battle tank, Kreminna, Luhansk region, Ukraine, 2023. Source: ukr.warspotting.net

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up February 27-March 1, 2023

Under the cut:

Ukrainians have reported attacks in the Bilohorivka and Kreminna areas in the eastern Luhansk region of Ukraine."There is constant shelling of our de-occupied settlements along the front line, despite the fact that there are many civilians in some settlements," Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, said. "The enemy is well aware of this and still it shells with heavy caliber weapons." For the past two months, the front lines close to the border of Luhansk and Kharkiv regions have seen heavy exchanges of fire as well as fighting in the forests west of Kreminna, which is held by the Russians.

Russia has lost at least 130 tanks and armoured personnel carriers in a three-week battle in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian officials said the “epic” fight on a plain near Vuhledar produced the biggest tank battle of the war so far and a stinging setback for the Russians, the New York Times reports.

Finland has begun construction of a 200km fence on the Russian border, the country’s border guard has announced. Terrain work would begin today “with forest clearance and will proceed in such a way that road construction and fence installation can be started in March”, the Finnish border guard said in a statement.

Ukrainian forces hung onto their positions in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut early on Thursday under constant attack from Russian troops amid signs time might be running out. Russia says seizing Bakhmut would open the way to fully controlling the rest of the strategic Donbas industrial region bordering Russia, one of the main objectives of its invasion a year ago on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian air defense is shooting down 80% of Russian missiles, according to Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces.

“Ukrainians have reported attacks in the Bilohorivka and Kreminna areas in the eastern Luhansk region of Ukraine.

"There is constant shelling of our de-occupied settlements along the front line, despite the fact that there are many civilians in some settlements," Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, said. "The enemy is well aware of this and still it shells with heavy caliber weapons." For the past two months, the front lines close to the border of Luhansk and Kharkiv regions have seen heavy exchanges of fire as well as fighting in the forests west of Kreminna, which is held by the Russians.

"They also have a lot of Lancet kamikaze drones, and they are trying to use them to search for positions and equipment and to inflict fire," Hayday said.

There has also been heavy fighting east of the town of Kupyansk, which is in the same zone.

The Ukrainian State Border Guard Service released video of aerial reconnaissance in the area, saying that over the past few days 117 drone reconnaissance flights had helped fix artillery fire.

The General Staff said that in the northern region of Kharkiv, several civilians had been wounded in Russian rocket attacks. It reported heavy shelling along the frontline that runs north-south on the Luhansk-Kharkiv border.

Southwest of Donetsk city, "the enemy conducted unsuccessful offensive actions," according to the General Staff.

CNN has geolocated video published by one Ukrainian brigade showing several Russian tanks and fighting vehicles being struck near the town of Avdiivka.

"In the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, the enemy is defending," the General Staff said, but "in some areas, it is trying to create conditions for an offensive."

The General Staff said Russian artillery had fired at more than 40 settlements in the long front line that runs from Donetsk through Zaporizhzhia and into Kherson.”-via CNN

~

“Russia has lost at least 130 tanks and armoured personnel carriers in a three-week battle in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian officials said the “epic” fight on a plain near Vuhledar produced the biggest tank battle of the war so far and a stinging setback for the Russians, the New York Times reports.

Both sides sent tanks into the fray, “with the Russians thrusting forward in columns and the Ukrainians manoeuvring defensively, firing from a distance or from hiding places as Russian columns came into their sights”, the paper writes.

When it was over, not only had Russia failed to capture Vuhledar, but it also had made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks earlier in the war: advancing columns into ambushes.

The remains of the Russian tanks, blown up on mines, hit with artillery or destroyed by anti-tank missiles, now litter farm fields all about the coal mining town, according to Ukrainian military drone footage.

Russian troops also suffered a lack of experienced tank commanders in Vuhledar, and many of the fighters consisted of newly conscripted soldiers who had not been trained in Ukraine’s tactics for ambushing columns, the paper says. Ambushes have been Ukraine’s signature tactic against Russian armoured columns since the early days of the war.

By last week, Russia had lost so many machines to sustained armoured assaults that they had changed tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.”-via The Guardian

~

“Finland has begun construction of a 200km fence on the Russian border, the country’s border guard has announced.

Terrain work would begin today “with forest clearance and will proceed in such a way that road construction and fence installation can be started in March”, the Finnish border guard said in a statement.

The 3km pilot project at the border crossing near Imatra is expected to be completed by the end of June, it added. Construction of a further 70km, mainly in southeastern Finland, will take place between 2023 and 2025.

The fence will be more than 3 metres tall with barbed wire at the top, and particularly sensitive areas will be equipped with night vision cameras, lights and loudspeakers.

Currently, Finland’s borders are secured primarily by light wooden fences, mainly designed to stop livestock.

Although the Finland-Russia border has “worked well” in the past, Brig Gen Jari Tolppanen told AFP in November that the war in Ukraine had changed the security situation “fundamentally” and that a border fence was “indispensable” to stop large-scale illegal entries from Russian territory.”-via The Guardian

~

“Ukrainian forces hung onto their positions in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut early on Thursday under constant attack from Russian troops amid signs time might be running out.

Russia says seizing Bakhmut would open the way to fully controlling the rest of the strategic Donbas industrial region bordering Russia, one of the main objectives of its invasion a year ago on Feb. 24.

Ukraine says Bakhmut has limited strategic value but has nevertheless put up fierce resistance. Not everyone in Ukraine is convinced that defending Bakhmut can go on indefinitely.

"I would not go as far as to say the situation is critical, but it is threatening," Ukrainian member of parliament Serhiy Rakhmanin said on Ukrainian NV radio on Wednesday night.

"From my standpoint, it is not logical to defend Bakhmut at any cost," Rakhmanin said. "But for the moment, Bakhmut will be defended with several aims - firstly, to inflict as many Russian losses as possible and make Russia use its ammunition and resources."

No lines of defence should be allowed to collapse, Rakhmanin said, and "there are two ways to approach this - an organised retreat or simple flight. And we cannot allow flight to take place under any circumstances."”-via Reuters

~

“Ukrainian air defense is shooting down 80% of Russian missiles, according to Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces.

"At the moment, the percentage of missile interceptions has changed significantly and is at 80% or even higher in some cases. Our air defense specialists have become more professional and competent," Naiev said on March 1.

Naiev added that Russia is changing its methods and tactics when it comes to air attacks.

"Therefore, we conduct analysis after each strike," said Naiev. "This analysis is necessary, and the commanders make decisions accordingly to ensure the resilience of the air defense is at the highest level."”-via Kyiv Independent

[tentacion3099]

Donbas LAN Party edit. Part of the Battle of the Svatove–Kreminna line. Mode -Team Deathmatch. Map - Kreminna Forest

[aurevoirmonty]

Poutine: «Les pertes ukrainiennes sont colossales, au moins 10 fois plus que les nôtres»

«Les combats se sont intensifiés et les principales batailles ont eu lieu dans l'oblast de Zaporijia», a précisé Poutine, confirmant que l’armée otanokiévienne tente encore et encore de percer le front russe dans le sud, notamment à Robotyne (https://goo.gl/maps/gJ4vLuuh2xGi29RH9).

«L’ennemi a utilisé un grand nombre de véhicules blindés. Il s'agit de 50 unités, dont 39 unités, comprenant 26 chars et 13 véhicules blindés, ont été détruites.»

Dans ce secteur, plusieurs unités ukrainiennes ont été anéanties dans un «sac à feu» , surnommé «Bradley Square», en raison du grand nombre de blindés de l’OTAN qui y ont été détruits.

Malgré le brouillard de guerre, une chose est sûre: depuis le début de leur «contre-offensive», les forces de Kiev n’ont jamais pu atteindre les lignes de défense «Sourovikine (https://t.me/kompromatmedia/2542)».

Au nord, plus inquiétant pour Kiev et l’OTAN, l’armée russe a percé les lignes ukrainiennes dans le secteur de Kreminna (https://goo.gl/maps/LsaJmqpgGUNU51JQ6), ouvrant la voie à une offensive possiblement en direction de Sloviansk (https://goo.gl/maps/qpXq3yqwo6sf2TkD7) et Kramatorsk.

[blueiscoool]

Ukrainian 'Ghosts'

Newly mobilized and undertrained Russian soldiers firing at Ukrainian ghosts from a trench dug in a forest near Kreminna.

[mokhosz-nafo]

☠️ Another Russian colonel, the commander of the 19th regiment Yevhenii Ladnov with the call sign "Pioneer" was eliminated in the Kreminna direction.

🔥 He died from artillery fire. Russians writes that he ordered the killing of 6 of his subordinates for refusing to go on a combat mission, and he also organized blocking units.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Brazilian volunteers in Ukraine, Kreminna Forest. Aug 2024

[mariacallous]

Vladimir Putin must be enjoying this moment.

Not only did the Russian president manage to snuff-troll the Munich Security Conference with news of the death of his main political rival, Alexei Navalny (“slowly murdered” by his jailers in Siberia, according to the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell); he also scored a well-timed battlefield success when, over the weekend, his troops finally took the town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine following a tactical retreat by ammunition-starved Ukrainian troops who had defended the town since 2014.

According to one participant in Munich, the mood at the gathering of Western security and diplomatic elites — typically a chance to project unity and resolve between exclusive cocktail receptions — was grim. “There is a sense of urgency, without a sense of action,” said Jan Techau, Germany director for the Eurasia Group, a think tank. “It’s a very strange state of affairs.”

Indeed, two years after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation has never looked more perilous for Kyiv — and for its neighbors along Russia’s western frontier — since the dark days of February 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden offered his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a one-way ticket out of Ukraine (declined), and much of the world assumed (wrongly) that Russia would overrun the country. 

U.S. Republicans, following orders from ex-President Donald Trump, are blocking arms deliveries to Ukraine, subjecting troops to “ammo starvation” with immediate, deleterious effects on the battlefield. After taking Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Russian troops are now trying to press their advantage in the directions of Marinka, Robotyne and Kreminna, according to battlefield observers. European leaders, despite having become Ukraine’s chief material backers, are failing to fill the gap in military supplies left by the U.S. and, thanks to France, insisting on “Buy European” provisions despite a lack of manufacturing capacity and refusing to shop outside the bloc for shells.

Meanwhile Putin, who’s still very much in power despite efforts to sanction his regime into submission, is ramping up his campaign of intimidation against the West. In his interview with ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Russian leader mentioned Poland more than a dozen times, placing the NATO member squarely within his vision for Grand Russia, and his deputy prime minister has started to make threatening noises toward the Norwegian leadership of the island of Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean, of all places.

With a deepening sense of gloom and resignation, leaders in countries most exposed to Russia’s flank are preparing for scenarios that would have been laughed off, in Berlin and Washington, as the fever dreams of Cold War nostalgics just 25 months ago. A top Swedish defense official told his countrymen in January to “prepare mentally” for war, and the defense ministers of Denmark and Estonia warned earlier this month that Russia was likely to start testing NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective security within the next five years — i.e. attack the world’s most powerful military alliance just for a chance to “find out.”

It’s a parabolic slide down from the burst of “can-doism” that delivered weapons, sanctions and Germany’s “Zeitenwende” (epochal shift) during the first months of the war. A NATO official speaking to POLITICO said the prevailing view within the alliance is that Ukraine is “not about to collapse” and that the “gloom is overdone.” Some battlefield observers aren’t so sure. “What we’re hearing from the front is increasingly worrying,” a senior European government official said in January. “The risk of a breakthrough [by the Russians] is real. We’re not taking it seriously enough.”

It may be too early to say the West will lose the war in Ukraine — but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it could. As Kyiv and its allies contemplate a gruesome menu of possibilities for the coming year — including an all-fronts push by Russia’s allies, Iran and China, to trigger World War III — it’s worthwhile to pause for a moment and ask: How did we get here? How did the West, with its aircraft carriers and combined economic footprint approaching €60 trillion (dwarfing China, Iran and Russia combined) cede the initiative to a shrinking, post-Soviet country with the GDP of Spain, and end up in a defensive crouch flinching at the next affront from Putin? And if repelling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t the West’s real objective — what is?

Drip-drip deterrence

According to diplomats, security officials and experts on both sides of the Atlantic who spoke to POLITICO for this article, the answer to the first question lies partly in the fact that the West’s response to Russia has been, at least in part, dictated by fear of nuclear confrontation rather than a proactive strategy to help Ukraine repel its invaders.

“It all started in the beginning of the war when [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz and the [U.S. President Joe] Biden administration agreed on this gradual approach towards arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia,” said one senior EU diplomat on condition of anonymity. “Some governments were arguing, ‘We need to use the full force of our dissuasive capacity against Russia. But the argument we heard in return was, ‘No, we don’t want to.’”

“There was fear in Biden’s administration and Scholz’s entourage about the possibility of a nuclear confrontation,” the diplomat continued. “This fear was very strong in the beginning. It shaped the world’s response.”

According to Techau and Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the likelihood that the Russian leader formulated some sort of nuclear threat directly to both Biden and Scholz early on in the conflict, scaring the bejesus out of them, is high. “We know that Putin told [former British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson that he could strike his country within five minutes,” said Hunter Christie. “If he did that to Johnson, it’s perfectly possible that he did the same thing to Biden.” Techau added: “There has been fairly well-informed speculation about a direct [nuclear] threat to Scholz, warning him that such a strike could happen.”

Public discussion of a Russian nuclear strike died down after the first few months of the war, replaced by conventional wisdom that Putin would gain little from a first-use strike. But there is evidence to suggest that, far from fading as a consideration for Biden, Scholz and their aides, fear has, in fact, shaped every aspect of their approach to Ukraine, particularly as regards deliveries of weapon systems. 

“There is an obvious pattern here,” said Hunter Christie. “We saw it with tanks. We saw it with aircraft. We saw it with caveats on how the HIMARS [a rocket artillery system] could be used. There is an obsessive attention to detail, to caveats on how these weapons can be used, even though some of the considerations are militarily absurd. What this obsession is covering up for is a fear of triggering some escalatory response. That’s understandable — nobody wants nuclear war — but that’s what it is.”

A case in point: the topsy-turvy debate, starting in late 2022, about the danger of sending Western-made tanks, namely the German Leopard II and the American Abrams tank, to Ukraine. In October of that year, Wolfgang Schmidt, one of Scholz’s closest advisers and a fellow traveler dating back to his time as mayor of Hamburg, came out with a bewildering array of reasons not to send the tanks, including that a) Ukraine couldn’t possibly maintain them and b) that the Iron Cross painted on them would somehow be used to suggest Germany had joined the war, or something. 

As it turned out, Berlin or Kyiv discovered the existence of paint, fears were overcome, and the tanks were delivered. But a pattern had been established whereby the West agonizingly debates the wisdom of sending a weapons system for months, until some trigger pushes Scholz and Biden over the line. 

More than a year later, Berlin and Washington are still following the same playbook, except now the debate centers on long-range missiles that would help Ukraine disrupt Russian supply lines, namely the U.S.-made ATACMS and German Taurus cruise missiles and the possibility of using Russia’s frozen assets — some €300 billion is held in Western countries — to help Ukraine. Until Navalny supposedly died while taking a walk in his Siberian prison, Scholz was pushing back on sending Taurus missiles which, according to German officials, shoot too far and too precisely and therefore raised the risk of direct attacks on Russian soil that could, in turn, prompt retaliation from Moscow against Germany. 

Navalny’s untimely death — he was 47, and healthy-looking — seems to have changed the calculus. Media in Germany and the U.S. are now reporting that Biden and Scholz are getting ready to hand over Taurus and ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. Similar debates are under way regarding the use of Russian frozen assets to help Ukraine — currently held up due to opposition from Germany and Belgium, among other EU countries — and on purchasing ammunition for Ukraine from outside the bloc, opposed by France, Greece and Cyprus.

In each case, complex arguments are set up to establish the danger, complexity or impossibility of a particular option, only to be swept away and forgotten when a fresh provocation from Russia “justifies” the additional step. “This has been the pattern since day one,” said a second EU diplomat. “It’s no, then no but, and then yes once the pressure has become too great. Not much has changed.”

“Some people live under the illusion that limited support for Ukraine is enough to keep Russia at bay and that the situation doesn’t pose any real danger to the EU,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, a European commissioner from Lithuania. “But I think this is wrong absolutely. The war itself, both as a humanitarian disaster and a security problem, is highly problematic for the EU.”

Not so dynamic duo

Beyond fear, diplomats and experts pointed to the dynamic between Scholz and Biden as a driving force behind the West’s overriding strategy of incrementalism and escalation management, rather than a focus on strategic outcomes, in dealing with Ukraine. Despite a 16-year age difference, both men came of age politically during the Cold War and its widespread fears of nuclear armageddon. Both are deeply wedded to the U.S.-led international order and NATO protections for Europe. Both are men of the left who are instinctively suspicious of armed intervention and, temperamentally speaking, risk-averse and uncomfortable with geopolitical gamesmanship, experts and diplomats argued.

“Biden, we know, has always been ideologically opposed to the idea of intervention and war — see his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan,” said the first diplomat. “In this case, he is doing everything possible not to have a confrontation with Russia. America used to be strong on strategic ambiguity. But Biden has gone out of his way to telegraph moves in advance throughout this conflict. In this sense, he has found commonality with Chancellor Scholz, who is also cautious by nature.”

A former far-left activist who traveled to Moscow in his youth and rose through the ranks of a German Social Democratic Party known for its historic sympathy toward Russia, Scholz wasn’t naturally configured to be a Russia hawk. “He has come a huge distance, but nobody knows to what extent that legacy [of deference toward Russia] is still with him.”

Experts also pointed to the key role of advisers, namely U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Scholz’s advisers Schmidt and Jens Pl��tner, a foreign policy adviser, in shaping their bosses’ approach. Diplomats and experts consulted for this article described Sullivan as being “highly intelligent,” “not deeply experienced on national security,” “ultimately career-driven” and “a bit short on emotional intelligence.” Schmidt gets “inseparable from Scholz,” “very cautious,” “basically terrified of Russia,” “not as big a foreign policy expert as he thinks he is.” Plötner, in turn, is described as “a super close confidante,” “Russia-friendly,” “unconvinced by the narrative that an attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us.”

“Together these two [Sullivan and Schmidt] engineered the idea that Russia would eventually get ground down and be discouraged,” said Hunter Christie. “That may have avoided nuclear war, but it has trapped us between two suboptimal outcomes: a bigger war with Russia or the collapse of Ukraine, which would be a shock and a humiliation and a demonstration of Western weakness.”

The role of other leaders in shaping Western policy is not to be under-estimated. Ukrainian sources tend to identify the United Kingdom, under both ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and current PM Rishi Sunak, as a staunch ally that helped to break Western reticence on delivering certain weapons. They credit acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte with having broken a taboo on the delivery of Western fighter jets, as the Netherlands is currently preparing to deliver 24 F-16s to Ukraine at some point later this year, according to the Dutch Defense Ministry. Nordic, Baltic, Central and Eastern European states, namely Poland, win high marks from Ukrainian officials for the depth of their commitment to Ukraine’s victory — exemplified by Denmark’s recent decision to send all of its artillery to Kyiv.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently signed a defense agreement with Ukraine, comes in for more mixed reviews. While he is praised for having abandoned his insistence on dialogue with Putin and sending long-range SCALP missiles, his current insistence on “Buy European” has opened him to charges of leading a “cynical” policy more focused on rebuilding Europe’s defense industry than on helping Ukraine in the battlefield.

Yet in the broadest sense, interviewees agreed it was Scholz and Biden and their aides who set the overall pace. Their caution, incrementalism and fear of nuclear escalation has defined a Western strategy primarily focused on defensive measures, escalation management and avoidance of nuclear confrontation, with Ukraine’s battlefield success against Russia being a secondary consideration. Except that not everyone agrees that this amounts to a “strategy.” 

“There is no strategy,” said a third European diplomat. “Things are just happening. Later on, it’s easy to say there was a strategy, this was all part of a plan. But that has never been the case.” A fourth diplomat concurred. “There are slogans — ‘As long as it takes,’ ‘Russia cannot win,’ this kind of thing. But what does any of this really mean? They are things that people say. What matters is what they do.”

‘The long term’

Having squandered an opportunity to equip Ukraine’s forces with air power during the early months of 2023 — a key factor in the failure of a much-touted counteroffensive — Western leaders now see their hands increasingly tied by politics: The U.S. presidential election and Donald Trump on one side; the European Parliament election and the rise of right-wing forces led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the other. Critics warn that the window of opportunity for the West to help Ukraine turn the tide is, if not already closed, closing.

The anti-Ukraine MAGA caucus led by Trump, with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson as chief whip and Republican Senator J. D. Vance as its top ambassador (who couldn’t find time to meet with Zelenskyy while in Munich), looks unlikely to greenlight the next package of Ukraine funding anytime soon. Europe’s right-wing forces  — from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France to Italy’s Matteo Salvini to Dutch populist Geert Wilders and Hungary’s Orbán  — are expected to bolster their influence after the election in June, with further sanctions and aid packages for Ukraine a possible casualty.

Yet there is still time and the basket of options is far from empty. As the reports on ATACMS and Taurus suggest, Western leaders are still able to deliver game-changing weapons to Ukraine if the incentive is strong enough (in this case, officials say deliveries could be justified by sending Putin a “Navalny signal” following the opposition leader’s death). But the deliveries aren’t a done deal, and other possibilities — including confiscating Russian assets, taxing Western companies that continue to operate in Russia, or stepping up sanctions against Putin’s regime — remain on the table, visible to all, yet undeployed. Even after Navalny’s killing, there has been no “Mario Draghi moment” signaling resolve to do “whatever it takes” to help Ukraine prevail, added Techau.

“We see that the sanctions we have agreed — [on Feb. 21] we adopted another round — don’t bite enough,” added Sinkevičius. “So we need to fix our approach, globally.”

The restraint suggests that, behind the bold speeches on helping Ukraine “as long as it takes,” another unspoken agenda may well be dictating Western actions. When asked to describe the optimal outcome for Ukraine in the coming year, several European diplomats talked about a “stabilization” of the conflict. Pressed on what this would entail, the diplomats said it would mean nudging Kyiv to open negotiations with Putin to freeze the conflict and lock in current territorial gains, in exchange for Western “security guarantees” (such as those recently signed with France, the Netherlands and the U.K.) and a path to membership of the EU. 

Acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who’s seen as a likely pick to become the next secretary-general of NATO, hinted at this “day after” vision during remarks at the Munich Security Conference. While saying that only Kyiv can trigger peace negotiations with Moscow, he added: “But when that happens, we will also have to sit down with the US, within NATO, [and] collectively with the Russians to talk about future security arrangements between us and the Russians.”

Diplomats acknowledge that such negotiations have failed in the past, and might buy Putin time to prepare for his next offensive. Yet the alternative — a surge in Western financial and military aid during 2024 that would let Ukraine deliver a decisive punch against the Russian invader — is greeted with even greater skepticism in European embassies.

Another, unspoken aspect of the Western approach is that some factions hope to return to business as usual with Russia soon after a hypothetical freezing of the war. This might explain the profound reticence, namely in Germany, to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets and face the risk that Moscow could hit back by repossessing the hundreds of billions of euros worth of assets still held by European firms in Russia. It also chimes with a report in Germany’s Welt newspaper (like POLITICO, a member of Axel Springer) asserting that Scholz opposed naming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as NATO’s next secretary-general because she is “too critical toward Moscow, which could become a disadvantage in the long term.”

In a speech at the Munich conference, Scholz gave a hint of how the West is quietly redefining its war aims in Ukraine. Rather than say “Ukraine will win,” or “Russia must leave Ukraine,” the German Chancellor argued that Putin should not be allowed to dictate the terms of peace in Ukraine. “There will be no dictated peace. Ukraine will not accept this, and neither will we,” Reuters quoted Scholz as having said. 

“This is certainly softer than ‘Ukraine cannot lose,’” said Techau. “And essentially [it] means to cement the status quo.”

The West hasn’t given up on Ukraine. But its overriding focus on risk management reveals a desire to wind down the conflict and make a deal with Putin, if possible sooner rather than later. The question looming over the conflict is whether that approach will stave off disaster — or invite something worse to come.

[argumate]

Kadyrov’s threats to transfer his forces to Bakhmut may have blackmailed the Russian military command into allocating ammunition to Wagner mercenaries. Kadyrov published a letter on May 6 asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to order Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Director of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvadia) Viktor Zolotov to authorize the transfer of Chechen “Akhmat” units from “other directions” to assume Wagner’s positions in the Bakhmut direction. Kadyrov’s letter to Putin bypassed the Russian chain of command, and the withdrawal of Chechen forces from other parts of the theater likely posed a risk to Russian defensive lines, a risk that Gerasimov and Shoigu, or Putin, appear to have been unwilling to take. ISW previously observed Akhmat units operating in the Bilohorivka area on the Svatove-Kreminna line and in Zaporizhia Oblast, and their withdrawal from those positions might undermine Russia’s defensive preparations ahead of the planned Ukrainian counteroffensives. Shoigu and Gerasimov, who have been consistently loyal to Putin’s orders, may alternatively have decided to allocate ammunition to Wagner at Putin’s direction. Kadyrov’s and Prigozhin’s apparently successful joint blackmail efforts further indicate that Gerasimov does not actually control all the Russian forces in Ukraine, despite being the nominal theater commander. Gerasimov likely attempted to assume control over all Russian irregular forces over the winter of 2023 but had failed in that endeavor even before losing favor with Putin in the spring.

hilarious