Friday 3 June 2022

One hundred days of war in Ukraine! When will it end?

It has become a war whose outcome is almost impossible to predict with any degree of certainty. Neither side wants to give up or give in. Putin wants to grab as much territory as possible and then pressure Zelnsnky to negotiate. Zelensky wants all Russian troops out of his country before he will sit down with Putin. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, is firmly of the view that a deal will be the only way to end the war but envisages it continuing for many more months. Zelensky, at least publically, is convinced Russia can be beaten, and when he gets his hands on the four near-50-mile range advanced artillery rocket systems the US is sending, he is anticipating getting his revenge on the Russians who have been firing artillery shells into Ukrainian cities, destroying once great places to live and work. When the new weapon systems arrive they will certainly make a difference but, first, the Ukrainian military will have to be trained by the Americans to fire them. In the three weeks it will take to get them trained, the Russian troops may well have advanced so far into the Donbas region that there may be nothing left for the Kyiv forces to recover. The Russians seem to have an endless supply of artillery shells. It seems strange that Joe Biden waited so long before sending Ukraine the weapons they have been desperately calling for for nearly the whole 100 days. It may now be too late.

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