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Tag: Ukrainians

  • Contributor: Trump’s Russia and Ukraine summits show he can push for peace

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    By hosting an unprecedented short-notice summit with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and key European leaders on Monday, President Trump significantly raised the prospects for ending Russia’s three-and-a-half-year-long war against Ukraine. The vibe at the opening was affable and positive. The participants genuinely looked determined to work out compromises that only a few weeks ago appeared illusory. It was a good sign for long-term Euro-Atlantic security cooperation in the face of challenges that, in Trump’s words, we have not faced since World War II. Toward the end, Trump’s call to Moscow brought a follow-up U.S.-Ukraine-Russia summit within reach.

    But the rising expectations also reveal formidable obstacles on the path to peace. As the world’s leaders were heading to Washington, Putin’s forces unleashed 182 infantry assaults, 152 massive glide bombs, more than 5,100 artillery rounds and 5,000 kamikaze drones on Ukraine’s defenses and 140 long-range drones and four Iskander ballistic missiles on Ukraine’s cities. The attacks claimed at least 10 civilian lives, including a small child. This is how Russia attacks Ukraine daily, signaling disrespect for Trump’s diplomacy.

    The Monday summit also revealed that Putin’s ostensible concession at the Alaska summit to agree to international security guarantees for Ukraine is a poisoned chalice. On the surface, it seemed like a breakthrough toward compromise. The White House summit participants jumped on it and put the guarantees at the center of discussions.

    And yet there has been no agreement, and the world has more questions than answers. How could the Ukrainian armed forces be strengthened to deter Russia? Who would pay? How could Russia be prevented from rebuilding its Black Sea Fleet and blocking Ukrainian grain exports? What troop deployments would be needed? Who would put boots on the ground in Ukraine? What kind of guarantees should match what kind of territorial concessions?

    Such questions are fraught with complex debates. Between the U.S. and Europe. Within Europe. Within the Trump administration. Within Ukraine. And all of that even before having to negotiate the issue with the Kremlin. The net outcome of the past week’s diplomatic huddles will be Putin buying time for his aggression as Washington abstains from sanctions hoping for peace.

    Disingenuously, in exchange for this poisoned chalice of a concession, Putin demanded that Ukraine should cede not only lands currently under Russia’s illegal military occupation but also a large piece of the Donetsk province still under Kyiv’s control. That area is home to 300,000 people and is a major defense stronghold. Controlling it would give Russia a springboard to deeper attacks targeting big cities and threatening to bring Ukraine to its knees.

    Putin’s offer also threatens to tear apart Ukraine’s society. In my tracking poll with Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology completed in early August, close to half of 567 respondents want Ukraine to reassert control over all of its internationally recognized territories, including the Crimean peninsula illegally annexed in 2014. Only 20% would be content with freezing the conflict along the current front lines. The option of ceding territories to Russia still under Kyiv control is so outrageous that it was not included in the survey. Eighty percent of Ukrainians continue to have faith in Ukraine’s victory and to see democracy and free speech — core values Putin would take away — as vital for Ukraine’s future.

    Getting Ukrainian society right is important for Trump’s peace effort to succeed. Discounting Ukrainians’ commitment to freedom and independence has a lot to do with where we are now. Putin launched the all-out invasion in February 2022 expecting Ukrainians to embrace Russian rule. Then-President Biden assessed that Ukrainians would fold quickly and delayed major military assistance to Kyiv.

    Misjudging Ukrainians now would most likely result in a rejection of peace proposals and possibly a political crisis there, inviting more aggression from Moscow while empowering more dogged resistance to the invasion, with a long, bloody war grinding on.

    Thankfully, Trump has the capacity to keep the peace process on track. First, he can amplify two critically important messages he articulated at the Monday summit: U.S. willingness to back up Ukraine’s security guarantees and to continue to sell weapons to Ukraine if no peace deal is reached. Second, he can use his superb skills at strategic ambiguity and pivot back to threats of leveraging our submarine power and of imposing secondary sanctions on countries trading with Russia. Third, he can drop a hint he’d back up the Senate’s bipartisan Supporting Ukraine Act of 2025, which would provide military assistance to Ukraine over two years from confiscated Russian assets, the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal proceeds and investment in America’s military modernization.

    The Monday summit makes the urgency of these and similar moves glaringly clear.

    Mikhail Alexseev, a professor of international relations at San Diego State University, is the author of “Without Warning: Threat Assessment, Intelligence, and Global Struggle” and principal investigator of the multiyear “War, Democracy and Society” survey in Ukraine.

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    Ideas expressed in the piece

    • The recent summit between Trump, Zelenskyy, and European leaders represents a significant breakthrough that has substantially raised the prospects for ending Russia’s prolonged war against Ukraine. The author emphasizes that participants appeared genuinely determined to work out compromises that seemed impossible just weeks earlier, marking a positive development for Euro-Atlantic security cooperation in the face of challenges not seen since World War II.

    • Putin’s offer of international security guarantees for Ukraine constitutes a deceptive “poisoned chalice” that appears promising on the surface but creates more problems than solutions. The author argues that this ostensible concession has generated complex debates about military strengthening, funding, territorial deployments, and guarantee structures without providing clear answers, ultimately allowing Putin to buy time for continued aggression while Washington abstains from sanctions.

    • Putin’s territorial demands are fundamentally outrageous and threaten Ukraine’s social fabric, as the author notes that surveys show nearly half of Ukrainians want complete territorial restoration while only 20% would accept freezing current front lines. The author contends that ceding additional territories currently under Kyiv’s control would provide Russia with strategic springboards for deeper attacks and potentially bring Ukraine to its knees.

    • Trump possesses the strategic capacity to maintain momentum in the peace process through amplifying U.S. commitments to Ukraine’s security guarantees, utilizing strategic ambiguity regarding military threats, and supporting bipartisan legislation that would provide sustained military assistance through confiscated Russian assets and defense modernization investments.

    Different views on the topic

    • Trump’s approach to Putin diplomacy has been criticized as counterproductive, with concerns that his warm reception of the Russian leader constituted a major public relations victory for the Kremlin dictator that was particularly painful for Ukrainians to witness[1]. Critics argue that Trump’s treatment gave Putin undeserved legitimacy on the international stage during ongoing aggression.

    • Analysis suggests that Trump’s negotiation strategy fundamentally misunderstands Putin’s objectives, with observers noting that while Trump appears to view peace negotiations as a geopolitical real estate transaction, Putin is not merely fighting for Ukrainian land but for Ukraine itself[1]. This perspective challenges the assumption that territorial concessions could satisfy Russian ambitions.

    • Military and diplomatic experts advocate for increased pressure on Russia rather than accommodation, arguing that Russian rejection of NATO troop deployments in Ukraine and resistance to agreed policy steps demonstrates the need to make Putin’s war more costly through additional sanctions on the Russian economy and advanced weapons supplies to Ukraine[1]. These voices contend that Putin’s opposition to current proposals underscores the necessity of making continued warfare harder for Russia to sustain.

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    Mikhail Alexseev

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  • The Dnipro River Poses A Large Challenge For The Ukrainian Counter-Offensive

    The Dnipro River Poses A Large Challenge For The Ukrainian Counter-Offensive

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    Last week, the Russian military decided to abandon the city of Kherson and retreat to the east bank of the Dnipro River. As part of the operation, they destroyed or damaged every major river crossing including the Antonivsky Bridge, the Darivka Bridge, and the Nova Kakhovka dam. The Russian forces have also established a multi-tier defense on the east banks of the Dnipro River. Although the Russians gave up a strategic city, they have effectively stalled the Ukrainian counter-offensive. For the counter-offensive to continue, the Ukrainian military must now conduct a wet-gap crossing, a difficult military maneuver that involves bridging a river. Indeed, the Russian military lost a full Battalion Tactical Group in a failed wet-gap crossing across the Siverskyi Donets River earlier this year.

    The process for a wet-gap crossing starts by establishing security. In an ideal case, the crossing unit would have control of the far-side of the river. Even with control, the bridging site will quickly become a target for artillery and drone strikes, so it is necessary to limit these capabilities. This is done through locating and destroying enemy artillery assets, shooting down the drones, and maintaining covertness with the bridging operation.

    Once the threat from enemy artillery and drones have been reduced, the bridging operation can commence. An assault element is staged such that they can rapidly approach the bridging site while still maintaining cover and concealment. The engineer teams then emplace the bridges, which would likely be pontoon bridges given the Ukrainian assets and the length of the river. The Ukrainians have PMP Floating Bridge systems, which are folded up and mounted on the back of a KrAZ-255 truck. The trucks release the pontoons into water, at which point they unfold automatically. Bridging boats then connect to each pontoon, placing it in the proper position. Engineers lock each of the pontoons together to form a secure bridge that can support armored vehicles. For longer bridges, the boats remain attached to the bridge to counteract the river current. A well-trained team could have a bridge constructed in under an hour.

    After the bridge is assembled, the assault element must rush across the bridge to secure the bridgehead. The enemy will have placed obstacles, including mines, trenches, and barriers, to limit the effectiveness of the assault element. A follow-up force will then move over the bridge to continue the assault. These operations must be fast because once the enemy identifies the bridging site, the bridge is a target for an artillery or drone strike and will likely be destroyed. When the bridge is destroyed, the units on the far banks will be cut-off from support; as such, it is imperative that a large number of soldiers and vehicles move across the bridge rapidly.

    The first challenge faced by the Ukrainians is the amount of coordination required for such an operation. Wet-gap crossings require a substantial amount of training to ensure that the security, bridging, and assault units are in sync with each other. While the Ukrainians have engineer units with bridging capabilities, it is not clear as to how well trained they are. They previously established a short pontoon bridge across an unknown river that was destroyed by a Russian drone on May 7, 2022. Even with trained bridging units, the assault force also requires a large degree of training. Inadequate training results in traffic back-ups and units that cannot rapidly move across the river, resulting in a ripe target for the enemy.

    A second challenge is that the Ukrainians are unlikely to establish control of the eastern bank of the Dnipro River prior to a bridging operation. While some of the infantry fighting vehicles, including the BMPs and BTRs, can technically float, the process is not reliable. Indeed, a viral video shows a Russian BMP sinking as it tries to float across a river (note: the video was posted six years ago and is not from the current conflict). Additionally, the Dnipro River would likely not be calm enough for a vehicle to float over. If the Ukrainians attempted to ferry soldiers across the river, they would likely be inadequate for taking the Russian defensive positions which include armored vehicles. As such, the bridging units will likely be under-fire from the opposite shore as they establish the bridge.

    Perhaps the largest challenge is the large amount of artillery that the Russians have positioned on the east bank of the river. The river will be under continual surveillance from Russian scouts and from drones. There is low likelihood that the staging for a wet-gap crossing would go unnoticed. As soon as the bridging units enter the water, they will likely come under fire from Russian artillery and loitering munitions. Should the bridge be established, a single Shahed-136, which can carry up to 30 kg of explosives, could destroy a large section of the bridge.

    While difficult, the Ukrainians do have several technologies that can help. In particular, they have been very successful at locating and destroying Russian artillery. Their HIMARS missiles have significant range and can precisely destroy Russian targets. Ukrainian counter-drone and air-defense systems have been very successful at striking down Russian loitering munitions. Furthermore, the Ukrainians have their suite of electronic warfare equipment that can disrupt the Russian defensive operations.

    Regardless of these technologies, crossing the Dnipro would be challenging for the Ukrainian forces and will take time to plan and orchestrate, slowing down the counter-offensive. In modern times, few armies have successfully completed a wet-gap crossing. The Russians made a smart tactical move in abandoning Kherson, which would have been an urban bloodbath. The question now comes as to whether the Ukrainians will attempt a risky maneuver and cross the Dnipro.

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    Vikram Mittal, Contributor

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