How the war that Russia has launched against Ukraine will end It is something that no one knows yet. Rather, most analysts and experts lean toward a series of possible scenarios that will depend on the situation on the ground and political and strategic calculations.
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One of the key points to understand what is coming is how long can the ukrainian forces hold out before kiev falls and your government.
(Also: Follow the minute by minute of the conflict in Ukraine)
Both the Pentagon and external analysts predicted that the Russian army would quickly finish off the Ukrainian defenses, liquidating its counterattack capacity and then ‘beheading’ the Government of that country. But today, according to these same, Moscow has been accumulating setbacks in this first week of invasion because it underestimated the resistance capacity of the Ukrainians.
“It was a colossal intelligence failure, it grossly underestimated the Ukrainian resistance,” Michael Vickers, a former US deputy secretary of defense for intelligence, said this week.
However, Putin, after a dialogue with his counterpart from France, Emmanuel Macron, said that everything is going “according to plan”. And Macron, for his part, assured that “the worst is yet to come.”
Setbacks on the ground could well lead the Kremlin to unleash its full might and indiscriminately destroy much of the country.
The truth is that the more the destruction spreads, the more the sanctions against the Russian economy will tighten. Almost every day a new package of measures is being announced from the West, and the Russians are already experiencing a vertiginous fall of the ruble and a massive flight of foreign companies and capital.
The answer of what is going to happen with this war is not easy, since it goes through a combination of several elements. These are the scenarios.
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1. Short and brutal war
In this scenario, described by Thomas Friedman, a foreign affairs analyst who writes for The New York Times, as “total disaster”, Russia escalates its military operations and uses indiscriminate bombing against the population throughout the main cities of the country and it thoroughly involves its air force, which has so far played a marginal role.
Add to that an extensive campaign of cyberattacks against infrastructure, and Moscow seizes, destroys or isolates power and communication sources. According to Friedman, despite Ukrainian resistance, Kiev falls and the government is replaced by a puppet regime.
Putin claims victory and withdraws, leaving part of his forces to maintain control of vast areas in the east and south of Ukraine, which could possibly be annexed to Russia, as happened with Crimea.
“This is the worst war crime that has been committed in Europe since World War II, which would leave Putin isolated, turned into an international pariah and leading a country impoverished by strong sanctions that would not be lifted,” says the analyst. In any case, this new pro-Russian government would be constantly exposed to a Western-backed local insurgency that would make the country a source of permanent instability.
2. Long and costly war
Seth Jones, vice president of the Center for Strategic International Studies and director of the Program for International Security, argues that the war can turn into a long and bloody conflict in which Russia puts several cities under siege, which resist for months, as happened with the Russian invasion of Chechnya in the 1990s.
Grozny, the capital, took more than three months to fall, defended only by a group of ill-equipped rebels with no outside support. In this scenario, the war becomes an insurgent and anti-insurgent conflict, while the West continues to support those who resist.
At this point, the Russians eventually leave Ukraine years later, as happened with their intervention in the Afghanistan war in the 1980s. Jones notes, however, that the chance of this outcome is rather low because Russia is better equipped today than it was before. who was in those two previous conflicts and is commanded by a leader who seems willing to completely destroy the country for the sake of victory.
3. Regional conflict
In an opinion piece written for the BBC, James Landale, its expert on war and diplomacy, claims that the war could turn into a dangerous European conflict that would leave the world facing a third world war.
“It is possible that Putin’s goal is to reclaim as much of the former Soviet empire as possible and start by sending troops to Moldova and Georgia, which are not part of NATO. Or there may also be a calculation error by one of the parties that results in a regional scaling. Or Putin could declare that sending Western weapons to Ukraine is an act of war and respond by sending men to the Baltic countries, which are part of NATO, like Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with Kaliningrad. Something that would unleash a direct conflict with the Alliance that would drag the United States,” says Landale.
Under Article 5 of NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, and few believe that Putin’s calculation is to unleash a war in which he has to confront the 29 member countries of the organization which, unlike Ukraine, they do have enormous military power. But according to Landale, if his invasion fails and he feels hemmed in by the severity of the sanctions, he could be tempted to expand the conflict.
With an aggravating circumstance, according to Landale, the only way Russia can at least match an open war with the West is by using nuclear weapons, even in a tactical way, only to demonstrate that it can use them against Europe or the United States if necessary. No one knows how NATO would respond to such an escalation. But it is clear that she would leave the planet on the brink of a catastrophic nuclear confrontation.
4. Diplomatic departure
Experts consider that there is still the possibility of an agreement that leads to the cessation of hostilities. And they point to the negotiations that the Ukrainians and Russians are currently holding on the border with Belarus.
The simple fact that Moscow has accepted them opens – they say – a glimmer of hope. The theory in this scenario is that Putin begins to understand that perhaps the cost-benefit of the conflict is no longer in his favor in the face of the threat to his power, since the opposition grows in his country and he begins to feel the economic cost of the sanctions and the blow of isolation.
And, according to Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who worked at the National Security Council under former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, she is beginning to look for what the West calls an “off-ramp” that would allow her to put end the war without so much humiliation. Like Ukraine declaring its neutrality and in return Russia agrees to respect its independence (even if it expands its occupied territories in that country).
The problem, says Hill, is that the chance of the West offering this ramp is getting smaller with each passing day. “The atrocities already committed by Russia in Ukraine are so extensive that they make it very difficult to accept an agreement without strong punishment. A punishment that Putin probably will not accept, unless he loses the support of China and his own population, “says Hill.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already opened a war crimes investigation, and the prospect of one day ending up facing such a court will likely further radicalize him. Furthermore, Hill says, Putin has already invested so much political, economic and personal capital in the conflict that he probably has no incentive to back down.
5. Putin falls
Such is the power that the Russian president wields at the moment and his control of all state apparatuses is so tight that few see the possibility that the conflict in Ukraine could cost him his head. However, it would not be the first time something like this has happened. According to Lawrence Freedman, professor of War Studies at Kings College in London, the world has changed so much in these two weeks that even something like this is in the pipeline.
“Putin never anticipated such a unified response from the West. In fact, his calculation was precisely the opposite. That Europe’s economic dependence on its sources of energy and wealth would end up dividing both NATO and the European Union, and even more so with a weakened president in Washington. But what we have seen is a common front like no other in which even private companies are participating”, he affirms.
For Freedman, at this point “one could even talk about the possibility of a regime change both in Moscow and in Kiev.” Despite the strong internal repression, continues this analyst, the external pressure could generate a level of internal dissatisfaction that makes politicians, the military and, above all, oligarchs begin to consider his replacement by a more moderate figure that allows the lifting of the sanctions and the restoration of diplomatic relations with an interconnected world on which they depend.
Analysts say this is not a viable scenario at the moment, but it could break through if the war drags on and Putin becomes more volatile. Meanwhile, Ukraine resists as best it can, teaching the world a great lesson in courage and dignity.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
WASHINGTON
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