Winter is setting in as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches. Recent months have seen Ukrainian forces advance, but whether front lines will continue to shift as the weather changes remains unclear. Russia, which has mobilised some 300,000 new soldiers in recent months, has reportedly sent them to the front lines with little preparation. It claims to have annexed large parts of its neighbour, brandishes nuclear threats and has embarked on a weeks-long bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing blackouts across much of the country. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking from a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Bucharest, accused Russia of “weaponising winter” to break the Ukrainian people’s will and the unity of Kyiv's Western backers. For now, however, Western capitals appear in no mood to reduce their support to Ukraine.
In this episode of Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood speaks with Olga Oliker, Crisis Group’s Europe and Central Asia program director, about where Russia’s war in Ukraine might be headed next. They talk about how the winter might affect battlefield dynamics and the impact of Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. They discuss whether Russia might yet gamble on using a nuclear weapon and what Western and other governments can do to deter that. They ask whether opinion around the world toward the war is changing. They look at NATO policy and what an acceptable settlement for Ukraine and Western capitals might look like. Finally, as U.S. President Joe Biden says he would be prepared to meet his Russian counterpart to talk about Ukraine, they ask whether any space exists for diplomacy to find a way to end the war.
For more on the situation in Ukraine, check out Crisis Group’s extensive analysis on our Ukraine country page.
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