The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is about to enter its third year, in the past two years, both warring sides have failed to achieve their operational goals, and have paid a price beyond expectations in this local war with the highest intensity in the 21st century, tens of thousands of ** equipment have turned into scrap metal, massive ammunition and material consumption is emptying the arsenals of Western countries, and more than hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost on the battlefield, while the front stretching for thousands of kilometers has not changed significantly for a long time.
On the battlefields of Ukraine, such tank cemeteries are everywhere, and the losses of equipment and personnel on both sides of the war are staggering.
In 2023, neither Russia nor Ukraine has achieved decisive results, but in comparison, the Russian army is in a slightly better position than its opponent, at least winning the repeatedly contested **Mutter and withstanding the summer of the Ukrainian army**, and there is no rout in the summer of 2022. On the other hand, Ukraine has not only lost **Mutt, but also had little effect on **, and external aid has also shown a downward trend, but it has not yet reached the point of exhaustion with the support of the West. Looking forward to the Russia-Ukraine war in 2024, is it possible for Ukraine to reverse the trend? The author thinks that this depends on four factors, namely, the strength of Western assistance, Ukraine's mobilization capacity, the enhancement of the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian army, and the results of the United States.
In May 2023, Prigozhin, the late boss of the Wagner Group, displayed the Russian flag at **Mutter to declare victory. The capture of **Mutter was the most significant achievement of the Russian army in 2023, but it was overshadowed by the Wagner mutiny.
Western aid has slowed
Unlike Russia, which relies on endogenous power to support the war, Ukraine relies on Western blood transfusions to hold on. Ukraine was a poor country in Europe before the war, after two years of war devastation, the economy is even more withered, a large area of eastern territory is occupied by the Russian army, a large number of industrial and agricultural resources have been lost, infrastructure has been destroyed, and the flight of refugees and forced conscription has caused a significant loss of labor, coupled with corruption, the economic situation is getting worse. In 2022, Ukraine's GDP will only be $104.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 291%。In July 2023, Zelensky signed an agreement with BlackRock to attract funds for post-war reconstruction, and handed over electricity, energy, agriculture, mining, and a large amount of infrastructure to the United States to take over. In essence, Ukraine's economic lifeblood has been controlled by the West, and state assets are used as collateral to repay wartime aid.
In May 2023, Ukraine** Zelensky held talks with representatives of the American investment giant BlackRock, and the two sides then signed an agreement to hand over Ukraine's state-owned assets to BlackRock for management.
It can be said that now Ukraine has long lost the ability to conduct war on its own, and the impetus to maintain the functioning of Ukraine and society comes entirely from the assistance of Western countries. Since the end of last year, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, economy minister, and others have successively said that if Western aid cannot be received in time, Ukraine's civil servants, teachers' salaries and pensions of retirees will be in arrears. If it loses external assistance, let alone Ukraine's continued confrontation with Russia, I am afraid that it will be shut down in an instant, and social order will be on the verge of collapse.
However, in contrast to Ukraine's eagerness, the overall decline in Western aid has slowed. In January 2024, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that since the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States has provided a total of $70 billion worth of aid to Ukraine, and the European Union and other Western countries have also provided 100 billion euros in aid, with an overall aid of about $178 billion. In the same month, the United Kingdom and Germany announced plans to provide Ukraine with military aid worth 2.5 billion pounds and 7.4 billion euros by the end of the year. In February 2023, the EU announced that it would provide Ukraine with 50 billion euros in financial assistance in tranches over four years from 2024 to 2027, including 33 billion euros in loans and 17 billion euros in grants. The United States also plans to add $61 billion in aid, which has now passed in the Senate and is awaiting consideration by the House of Representatives.
From February 2022 to October 2023, the trend of U.S. military aid to Ukraine changed, which shows that the overall decline in aid in 2023 is underway.
In terms of the new aid identified and likely to be provided in 2024, the total amount has exceeded $100 billion, which seems to be a lot, but in fact it is less than the same period last year. According to calculations by the Russian TASS news agency, in 2023 the EU will provide 18 billion euros to Ukraine, an average of 1.5 billion euros per month, while the additional 50 billion euros will be spread over 4 years, which will be 10200 million euros. Moreover, Western aid is often high-turned, difficult to implement, and often comes with various conditions, and the aid that actually reaches the Ukrainians is usually discounted. For example, in March 2023, the EU promised to provide Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells within a year, but EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Joseph Fourei said in January 2024 that only 52% of artillery shells would be available by March this year, and that EU countries' ammunition stocks had been emptied. In addition, with the new intensification of the Arab-Israeli conflict in October 2023, the United States has prioritized aid to Israel, which has seriously affected aid to Ukraine.
Compared with the decline in Western aid, what makes Kiev more anxious is the growing weariness and antipathy of Western society to aid Ukraine. Since the outbreak of the conflict, agricultural products are the only products that Ukraine can export in bulk in exchange for foreign exchange, so the EU has opened its market to Ukrainian agricultural products, but it has seriously impacted the interests of farmers in European countries and attracted more and more fierce opposition. German farmers have already rushed to the streets of Berlin in tractors, and Germany has cut agricultural subsidies to aid Ukraine; Polish farmers and truck drivers have blocked the Polish-Ukrainian border and banned Ukrainian agricultural products from entering the EU. In this context, the enthusiasm of some countries to aid Ukraine has decreased significantly, for example, Poland's position has changed, Poland's ** Duda publicly said in an interview that "Crimea belongs to Russia for most of the history", Poland's high-level public discussion of historical territorial issues in western Ukraine on various occasions, and Hungary, Romania and other neighboring countries are also ready to move.
As a result of the initiation of Polish farmers and truck drivers**, the closure of the border crossings led to the blockade of Ukrainian trucks transporting agricultural products at the Ukrainian-Polish border.
In short, in 2022, the Western world, under the command of the United States, has money to pay, people to come in and out, and the posture of uniting to overthrow Russia is gone. The weakening of the willingness to aid Ukraine and the decline in the ability to aid Ukraine have led to the fact that the assistance that Western countries can provide in 2024 is only barely enough to maintain the operation of Ukraine** and society, and is far from enough to improve Ukraine's war capability.
The mobilization capacity is nearing its limit
In essence, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is still a "war of people", with Western countries paying for guns and Ukraine paying for it, and Russia fighting to the death. No matter how much ** equipment is aided by the West, it will be the Ukrainians who will charge into battle with flesh and blood, shedding the last drop of blood. However, after two years of conscription on several scales and the high cost of the front, Ukraine's human resources are close to exhaustion, and it is difficult to continue to expand the size of the army. At the end of 2023, the Ukrainian army proposed a plan to recruit another 500,000 soldiers, but Zelensky vetoed it. Even Zelensky, who has always taken a tough stance, no longer rashly conscripts, is enough to show how bad the human resources situation in Ukraine is. According to public reports, there is currently a general shortage of soldiers in the front-line units of the Ukrainian army, and even a battalion has only 40 people!
There are many flags in the cemetery of Ukrainian fallen soldiers, and behind each flag is a vanished young life.
Before the war, the total population of Ukraine was 41.13 million (excluding the Crimea region). After the start of the war, more than 6 million Ukrainians fled abroad and became refugees, and millions of people living in the four eastern regions of Ukraine were controlled by Russia, according to Ukrainian think tanks and Western ** estimates, the current population of the areas controlled by Ukraine is only more than 20 million people, according to the population of 50% of women, 50% of men are young and middle-aged, and the potential male soldiers who can be recruited are about 5 million, and after several rounds of mobilization, the Ukrainian army, police, homeland defense forces, Border guards and other armed forces have exceeded 1 million people, and about 38 have suffered in two years of war30,000 dead and wounded (according to the Russian Ministry of Defense), and only about 3.6 million young men are still able to mobilize in Ukraine. However, hundreds of thousands of people are civil servants, firefighters, technicians, and heavy manual workers who are not suitable for enlistment, as well as only children who need to support the elderly, single fathers who need to take care of their minor children alone, or fathers with three or more minor children in the family, and people who are physically handicapped and in poor health, as well as related households such as the children of powerful people who enjoy the privilege of exemption from conscription.
Ukrainian border guards caught a stowaway on the border, a 26-year-old man who tried to disguise himself as a man in order to escape foreign service and avoid military service.
In order to ensure the supply of soldiers, Ukraine** has issued a decree restricting the departure of male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60, and plans to lower the minimum age limit for conscription, as well as to conscript men over 45 years old into the army. Due to the corruption of Ukraine**, the conscription process has always been inefficient, and there have even been absurd cases of disabled people receiving conscription orders. Although Zelensky has repeatedly removed and punished conscription, he has never been able to fundamentally solve the problem of conscription, and the conscription work has been increasingly resisted. The corruption and injustice in the conscription process also severely hit the enthusiasm of young and middle-aged Ukrainian men to join the army, and they began to resort to various methods such as bribery, sneaking across the border, self-harm, and masquerading as a man to evade military service. With the difficulty of securing a male supply, the Ukrainian army began to recruit more and more women into the army, who were not only engaged in rear service, but even directly participated in front-line operations.
In order to make up for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian army began to recruit a large number of women, even pregnant women.
In contrast, having 1Russia, with a population of 400 million, is much more abundant than Ukraine in terms of human resources, and although the partial mobilization in 2022 has caused a lot of turmoil, the expansion plan of the Russian army has basically been completed step by step, and the front-line troops are becoming more and more abundant. If Western countries cannot provide new sources of troops, it will be difficult for Ukraine to compete with Russia with its existing population, and it will be difficult to barely maintain the existing front. Since the start of the war, there have been Western mercenaries who have gone to Ukraine to participate in the war, but the number of them is really a drop in the bucket compared to the rate of high-intensity fighting. If mercenaries are recruited from Asia, Africa and Latin America, although the amount is large and sufficient, the quality is inferior, the language barrier is poor, and it is difficult to manage and use, which is a waste of the Ukrainian army's insufficient ammunition.
From the shooting posture of the Black Silkworm Ecstasy, you can know how much ammunition they wasted
It is difficult to increase the combat strength of the Ukrainian army
In the summer of 2023**, it has been proven that in the absence of sufficient troop superiority, it is difficult for the Ukrainian army to break through the existing strong defense line of the Russian army. The Ukrainian army, which has lost troops in the ** operation and cannot be fully replenished, is no longer enough to launch a new large-scale ** in 2024 with its existing strength. Although since last winter, the Ukrainian army has frequently adopted asymmetric tactics such as precision-guided long-range raids and drone (boat) special attacks to harass the Russian army, and has achieved a brilliant record of shooting down the Russian early warning aircraft and sinking and damaging the Russian ship, but compared with the magnificent Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, these tactical victories are not enough to hurt the Russian army at all, nor can they change its strategic decline.
In September 2023, the Russian Black Sea Fleet submarine "Rostov-on-Don" was hit by a "Storm Shadow" cruise missile launched by the Ukrainian army in the dockyard of the port of Sevastopol and was seriously damaged, but this tactical victory was not enough to turn the overall situation on the battlefield.
At present, the Russian army, which has been crawling and fighting in the Ukrainian quagmire for two years, has clarified its tactics, relying on a dense and solid defense line to continuously consume the Ukrainian army's vital strength and technical equipment, fighting for some key points that the Ukrainian army will not retreat, attracting the Ukrainian army to invest troops and give full play to its firepower advantage to kill and injure, and use a **mutt-style flesh mill to bleed the Ukrainian army, and on this basis, it will launch a short assault to peek into the flaws of the Ukrainian army and encroach on the positions of the Ukrainian army. This set of tactics of the Russian army is a typical stubborn and dumb battle. Although the battle on the scene is not good-looking, it can ensure the control of the four prefectures in eastern Ukraine at a relatively small cost, hold vested interests, and wait for changes to wear down the Ukrainian army.
The defensive line built by the Russian army on the front line in eastern Ukraine consists of anti-tank obstacles and trenches, and there are multiple defensive positions in depth in the rear.
In order to break the current battlefield stalemate, the Ukrainian army needs to establish absolute superiority in strength, form an assault corps with strong offensive capabilities and in-depth breakthrough capabilities, and improve the logistics system and fire support system. However, as analyzed above, it will be difficult for the Ukrainian army to launch a new large-scale offensive in 2024 due to the easing of Western aid and the difficulty of replenishing troops. At present, among the new ** equipment that Western countries can provide to Ukraine, only a small number of F-16 fighter jets and army tactical missiles launched by "Hippocampus" rocket artillery have a greater deterrent effect on the Russian army, but they cannot completely change the situation of the war. As Western countries' ammunition stocks have been depleted, it will be difficult to fulfill the commitments in terms of the quantity, quality and speed of delivery of aid equipment in 2024. For example, the expansion of the production of 155-mm artillery shells, which the Ukrainian army needs most, is still far away, and the tanks promised by Germany have also been downgraded from the latest Leopard 2 to the Leopard 1, which has long been decommissioned.
The West has done its best to provide Ukraine with 155mm artillery shells, but it still cannot meet the high intensity of attrition on the front line.
Even if all the aid pledges of Western countries are implemented on time, it will not be enough for the Ukrainian army to form a counterattack corps of about 100,000 people in 20 infantry brigades by the summer of this year. The Ukrainian army's current more realistic choice is to take advantage of the favorable conditions of the Russian army's inability to launch a large-scale offensive during the spring turning period, rotate the front-line troops in a timely manner, and reorganize the disabled troops in last year's ** as soon as possible to restore combat effectiveness. Relying on Ukraine's human resources has been unable to send enough reinforcements to the front line, so the Ukrainian army is likely to merge and reorganize some brigade-level and battalion-level units. Relying on the intelligence support and advanced equipment of Western countries, it continues to launch small-scale offensives and special operations to consume the strength of the Russian army. This will be the most ideal state for the Ukrainian army in 2024. Unless the Russian army makes a major tactical mistake, the Ukrainian army will not be able to break the current stalemate.
It is difficult to reproduce the grand occasion of the Ukrainian army's strong soldiers, and the long-term war attrition and the lack of Western support have made it difficult for the Ukrainian army to form a powerful counterattack corps.
The United States** or Dingkun
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues to this day, and even the melon-eating masses can realize that the decisive force leading this war is neither in Kyiv nor in Moscow, but in Washington. It is with the support of the Western world, led by the United States, that Ukraine has stood firm in this showdown of disparities in strength, and Ukraine's decision-making has been largely influenced by the United States. Therefore, the turmoil of the United States may have a chain reaction on the battlefield between Russia and Ukraine, and for Ukraine, the biggest variable in 2024 is the United States in November.
Trump is gaining momentum in the 2024** election, and he has consistently vowed to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict as soon as possible.
There are many examples in the history of the United States where the rotation of political parties has influenced the course of wars. For example, during the Korean War, after Republican Eisenhower was elected, he changed the strategy of the Democratic Party Truman and quickly reached an armistice agreement with China and North Korea. During the Vietnam War, after Republican Nixon entered the White House, he adopted a different strategy from the Democratic Johnson** and gradually withdrew troops from Vietnam, which eventually led to the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime.
At the end of 1952, Eisenhower, who was about to become the first officer, inspected the Korean battlefield and made the decision to armistice after taking office.
In the current election situation, the maverick Trump is gaining momentum, and he has publicly declared more than once that once he is re-elected, he will fight with Putin and Zelensky respectively to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours. As we all know, Trump has always been pro-Russian, and judging from his past governing style, he is also true to his words, so the remarks of "ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 24 hours" may not be a campaign slogan, and it is likely to become an official measure of Washington, which is probably the last thing Zelensky wants to see. If Trump really makes this move, it will be an excellent step for Putin, who is in a dilemma on the Russian-Ukrainian issue, and he will definitely actively cooperate, after all, Russia has always maintained an open attitude towards peace talks, but the West has never given it a chance. For Russia, as long as it does not spit out what it eats, a ceasefire can be achieved. Once Trump comes to power and cuts off aid to force Ukraine to make concessions on the territorial issue in exchange for a truce, Zelensky, who has already been seized by the United States, will have no choice.
Trump and Putin have a close public relationship and have always taken a pro-Russian stance.
On the other hand, the current **Biden, who has a low approval rating and is in poor health, will inevitably be constrained by Republican forces in Congress in the case of **imminent**, and the $61 billion aid proposal promised by Biden has been stranded in Congress before, and can only be passed in the Senate after the domestic affairs of the United States, and whether it can be approved by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives is still unknown. In short, in the first year, all factions in the US political circles have turned their attention to the domestic election, and it is difficult for Biden to make major strategic decisions in aiding Ukraine, and it is difficult to invest a lot of resources in Ukraine.
Biden has always been Zelensky's staunchest backing, but soon, the old Biden is also unable to aid Ukraine.
At present, there are still 9 months left before the US ** election, of which nearly four months in the spring and autumn are not suitable for large-scale ground operations, and now the window left for the Ukrainian army is only 4 6 months. It has been analyzed earlier that it is difficult for the Ukrainian army to make a major breakthrough on the battlefield this year, and the window period is so short, and the stalemate until the November ** election will be a high probability event.
The four-month turning period in the spring and autumn in Eastern Europe is not conducive to large-scale operations, and both Russia and Ukraine will take the opportunity to rest and adjust their deployments.
Conclusion
To sum up, whether it is from the trend of Western aid, or the state of Ukraine's human resources and military combat effectiveness, the current situation of Kyiv is not optimistic, and the possibility of its passive situation being improved in 2024 is also quite slim, and the biggest financial sponsor behind it, the United States, is mired in domestic partisanship and election wars, and the real decisive results will not be revealed until after November. Therefore, for Ukraine, to be able to hold the line in 2024 and drag the war into 2025 is victory. As for the unrealistic desire to launch the big ** again and drive the Russian army back to their hometown, don't be delusional.