Category: Ukraine

Still Waiting for the Ukrainian Counter-offensive

By Nina Bachkatov

For weeks, the late spring Ukrainian counter-offensive has the object of intense speculation as it has been in late September, when the fall of Kherson seemed to pave the way for a roll back of Russian troops. But the situation is different today. During the winter, the West has responded to president Zelensky’s requests for the delivery of sophisticated offensive and defensive weaponry, and trained thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to man them. In those conditions, Ukrainian forces should be able to succeed in a counter-offensive, providing their country with a strong position at the negotiation table. In the meantime, the West has been scouting the world, to find ammunitions compatible with Ukrainian guns, sometimes bidding against each other or using dubious intermediaries. The Ukrainian forces consume ammunitions in huge quantities, which means more of it before and after the counter-offensive’s start.

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Crimea: the End of a Taboo

By Nina Bachkatov

The taboo concerning the fate of Crimea had just started to crumble, when the incident of 15 March involving a Russian fighter plane and an American unmanned drone put the Black Sea region under renewed international scrutiny – a region involving Ukrainian southern ports and the peninsula that Ukrainian forces want to regain. It was the first direct confrontation between two countries, Russia and the U.S., that are not technically at war which each other, but are actively involved on the dividing line about the European continent’s security. This kind of incident was due to happen in a region where Russians and the “allies of Ukraine” are testing the reactivity of each other in international airspace (or waters). In this case, the test concerned so-called “restricted zones”, unilaterally announced by Moscow in the framework of its invasion, extending Russian rights to occupied Ukrainian territories in 2014 and 2022.

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A  Long Year for Ukraine and the World

By Nina Bachkatov

The 24 January passed on without the anticipated Russian offensive. In the Western world, thousands of people took the streets to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people.  Their leaders promised again to be on Ukraine’s side “up to the end”, “the time it will take”. In Kiev, Volodymyr Zelensky attended low key ceremonies focused on prayers for the victims and thanks to the fighters. A year after the invasion, peace seems a distant reality, an issue that will be decided on the battlefield. This conviction is reinforced by the slow effects of the economic war, with its sanctions and counter-sanctions, declared by the West to limit the Kremlin’s capacity to finance its war. Now the accent is still on broader sanctions, but the accent is back to military aspects, notably the delivery of arms requested by Ukraine to push Russians out by its own forces. In those conditions, diplomacy is relegated to the sideline, albeit some discreet channels stay open, witnessed for instance by the regular exchanges of prisoners. In fact, nobody wants to expose itself as the one that will raise a white flag, while staying on the save side by talking about the need to keep contacts with Russia.

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The Importance of Perceptions: President Zelensky in Europe

By Nina Bachkatov

Back from his European tour, on 9 February, Ukrainian president Zelensky had addressed the nation as he does almost daily. He told his compatriots that he got “important agreements and good signals… This goes from long range missiles and tanks, to a new level of cooperation including fighter jets. But work has still to be done on that issue”. Evidently, Zelensky has only met supportive interlocutors and enjoyed standing ovations, keeping successfully world attention on his country. But, if he indeed got a lot of promises, a lot of hugs, and another European flag to enrich his collection, he came back home without clear conditions, and dates, for the jet fighters deliveries; nor an agenda for EU adhesion. Anyway, the training of pilots and engineers is “already starting” and the general consensus has been since that taboos about the deliveries of Western jets to Ukraine were falling, the way those concerning battle tanks did earlier.

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Moscow and Kiev weaponizing orthodox Christmas

By Nina Bachkatov

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine leaves no stone unturned, witness the saga around Christmas celebrations, epitomized in two extravagant pictures: that of the Russian president celebrating the Nativity in an empty church; and that of a crowd of men in uniforms attending the mass in Kiev’s Pechersky Caves just ‘liberated” from the All Russia and Moscow Patriarchate by presidential decree.

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EU “diversified” aid to Ukraine

By Nina Bachkatov

The EU carries on with the preparation of its 20-21 October during which China will be the elephant in the room and all the complexity of the war in Ukraine the centre piece. After 8 months of violence and devastations, the EU is confronted with the full consequences of the sanctions it had imposed on Russian individuals and companies to undermine president Putin leadership and to starve Russia’s budgetary capacities to sustain a war.

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Putin’s new approach about Ukraine

By Nina Bachkatov

The successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, backed by Western new weapons and shared intelligence resources, obliged president Putin to come out. It took the form of a televised address to the nation, against a background of leakages and unusual stage crafting. It was first due to take place on the 20th evening, then it was postponed for the next day, at 8, then at 9 o’clock. That was enough to unleash new speculation concerning Putin’s physical and moral condition. The usual well-informed sources said that he had been so affected by fever and coughs that he was unable to face the cameras, despite the dispatch of a large medical staff; and that the program shown as a single tirade was in fact a re-mix of interrupted sessions.

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