WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Western allies stepped up their support of Ukraine with additional funding, sanctions against Moscow and expanded military training while Kyiv's defence minister predicted a new Russian offensive.

With Russia's invasion in its 10th month, European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to provide 18 billion euros in financing to Ukraine next year and hit Moscow with a ninth package of sanctions. The measures designate nearly 200 more people and bar investment in Russia's mining industry, among other steps.

"Our joint determination to support Ukraine politically, financially, militarily and in the humanitarian area for as long as necessary remains unbroken," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after talks among the 27 national EU leaders in Brussels.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions more displaced and cities reduced to rubble since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in a "special military operation," saying it needed to protect Russian speakers from Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression.

In Washington, the U.S. military announced it will expand training in Germany of Ukrainian military personnel. Starting in January, 500 troops a month will be trained, building on more than 15,000 Ukrainians trained by the United States and its allies since April.

The programme is on top of those to teach Ukrainians to operate billions of dollars worth of specialized Western military equipment that the United States and its NATO allies have provided.

Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said the instruction would focus on joint manoeuvre and combined arms operations, referring to attacking an enemy with multiple capabilities at once.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in remarks published in the Guardian on Thursday that his country stood to gain an advantage over Russia from having its troops trained by the West.

KREMLIN SAYS WEAPONS ARE TARGETS

Ukraine has repeatedly urged its allies to send it more air defences to protect it from heavy Russian missile bombardment including against its energy infrastructure.

Russia has fired barrages of missiles on Ukraine's energy infrastructure since October, disrupting power supplies and leaving people without heating in freezing winter conditions.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the United States is finalising plans to offer Ukraine the Patriot missile defence system - one of the most advanced systems, and one which could require months of training.

The Kremlin said the United States was getting "deeper and deeper into the conflict in the post-Soviet republic", and that U.S. Patriot systems would be legitimate targets, something that Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday applied to all weapons supplied to Ukraine by the West.

NEW OFFENSIVE BY MOSCOW

Reznikov said that evidence was mounting that Russia, which has suffered a series of battlefield losses, plans a broad new offensive. He speculated this could occur in February when half of the 300,000 troops conscripted by Russia in October to support the Ukraine war would complete training.

“The second part of the mobilisation, 150,000 approximately, ... do a minimum of three months to prepare. It means they are trying to start the next wave of the offensive probably in February, like last year. That’s their plan,” Reznikov told the Guardian.

Both sides have ruled out a Christmas truce and there are currently no talks aimed at ending the conflict, Europe's largest since World War Two.

Moscow's new offensive could happen as soon as January but more likely in the spring, the Economist reported on Thursday, saying the assessment came from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, General Valery Zaluzhniy and General Oleksandr Syrskiy in recent interviews.

The push could be launched from the eastern Donbas area, the south or the neighbouring country of Belarus, and Russia could make a second attempt to capture the capital Kyiv, which it failed to do early in the invasion, the magazine cited the officials as saying.

Washington's acceleration in training of Ukraine's forces could help its military contend with any intensification in fighting in coming months.

On the ground, Russian shelling killed two people in the centre of Kherson, the southern city liberated by Ukraine last month, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president's office. The shelling also knocked out the city's electricity, officials said.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Russian forces had shelled Kherson more than 16 times on Thursday alone and were continuing what he called a brutal large-scale offensive in the eastern Donbas region.

Ukraine's military General Staff said Russia's main focus remained on the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, but that it was also trying to get a stronger foothold in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the battlefield accounts.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kiev has no choice but to fight to re-establish the country's 1991 borders, because the world failed to guarantee its security and Ukraine is alone in paying the price of the conflict, President Vladimir Zelensky has said in an interview published on Thursday.

The Economist spoke with Zelensky on December 8, but published an edited transcript only a week later. Just two days prior to the interview, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a ceasefire based on current frontlines would be a “phony peace” and that Washington will back Kiev whatever it decides to do and how. 

Asked about Blinken’s phrasing – “take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24” – Zelensky told the UK-based outlet that he actually wanted to restore the original borders of his country, including Crimea and all of Donbass.

“[This] is how it should end because otherwise it is not finished, it is just frozen. Just to leave it as it is now, to say, OK, let’s stop and they take Donbas, the south of our country, or part of it, and Crimea remains with them … Why?” he said. “We will not be able to, no one would forgive it.”

Freezing the war, he said, means the Russians would get time to “become more powerful occupiers, ready for more occupation, and that’s all.”

Just a day prior to the Economist interview, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the 2014 Minsk ceasefire was actually a way to “give Ukraine time” to prepare for war.

Restoring things to where they were on February 23 is impossible, Zelensky argued to The Economist, “because no one understands what security guarantees mean.” The Budapest Memorandum, he argued, meant “the whole world” would come to Ukraine’s rescue.

“But the whole world has not come, as we have seen. We gave away nuclear weapons, exchanged them for security guarantees. Did those guarantees work? No,” Zelensky said. 

Ukraine could not “give up” nuclear weapons under the 1994 treaty, because it never had any; Russia was recognized as the sole owner of the Soviet arsenal. Zelensky has received over $40 billion in aid, both military and financial, from the US alone just this year. The US and its allies have pledged to support Zelensky for “as long as it takes” for Russia to lose, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict. Moscow has accused the West of cynically prolonging the conflict and fighting a proxy war “to the last Ukrainian.”

According to Zelensky, the fighting will end only when the entire world sides with Ukraine and forces Russia to withdraw to the 1991 borders, as well as pay reparations “for generations.” He also said he wanted to see regime change in Moscow by the “good Russians,” but that after February 24 “everyone is guilty.”

Russia sent troops into Ukraine in late February, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

** Russia has adjusted its tactics in Ukraine and adapted to the Western-supplied weaponry Kiev uses, including US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, Ukraine’s top military commander General Valery Zaluzhny told The Economist, in an interview published Thursday.

"Russian mobilization has worked. It is not true that their problems are so dire that these people will not fight. They will. A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war," Zaluzhny stated, claiming that while Russian soldiers "may not be that well equipped," they still "present a problem for us." He added that he had "no doubt" Moscow would attempt a new push toward the capital city, Kiev.

The general also claimed that Moscow has tweaked its tactics in the ongoing conflict, adapting to the weaponry used against it. "They’ve gone to a distance the HIMARS can’t reach. And we haven’t got anything longer-range," Zaluzhny explained, echoing the repeated demands from Kiev to its Western backers to supply it with longer-range munitions. The military chief didn't elaborate on where exactly the Russian troops had purportedly "gone" to be out of reach of HIMARS systems.

The commander also bemoaned the ramped-up missile attacks launched by Moscow against critical Ukrainian infrastructure. At the same time, however, he claimed Ukrainian air defenses have been demonstrating very high interception ratios.

"Now we have a ratio of 0.76 [of downing missiles]. Russians are using this 0.76 coefficient of efficacy when they plan their attacks. This means that instead of 76 missiles, they launch 100. And 24 get through and reach their target. And what do two missiles do to a power station? It won’t work for two years. So it has to be built up," Zaluzhny explained.

The infrastructure bombing campaign came in the aftermath of the Crimean Bridge attack, widely cheered by top Ukrainian officials and blamed by Moscow on Kiev’s intelligence services. The attacks have now left the country’s energy system "on the edge," and its collapse will take a heavy toll on the troops as well, Zaluzhny asserted.

"In my personal opinion, I am not an energy expert but it seems to me we are on the edge. We are balancing on a fine line. And if [the power grid] is destroyed…that is when soldiers’ wives and children start freezing. And such a scenario is possible. What kind of mood the fighters will be in, can you imagine? Without water, light and heat, can we talk about preparing reserves to keep fighting?" he wondered.

Still, Ukrainians are ready to continue fighting, Zaluzhny insisted, adding that he was firm in his "religious" belief that "Russians and any other enemies must be killed, just killed, and most importantly, we should not be afraid to do it."

Reuters/RT