| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Five scenarios for ending the war. CNN forecast |
| 2025-08-08 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [Korrespondent] SCENARIOS FOR THE END OF THE WAR There is an option that the negotiations will agree on new negotiations later, after the onset of cold weather, which will lead to a freezing of the front in all senses around October, CNN outlined five possible scenarios for ending the war that the aggressor country Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. CEASE-FIRE As CNN author Nick Payton Walsh writes, it is highly unlikely that the Russian dictator will agree to a ceasefire that leaves the front lines unchanged - the US, Europe and Ukraine have already demanded such a break in May 2025 under threat of sanctions, but the Kremlin has not agreed. “Trump has abandoned sanctions in favor of low-level talks in Istanbul that have gone nowhere. A 30-day ceasefire earlier this year on energy infrastructure has not been fully observed and has not been successful,” Welsh said. According to the journalist, even Trump's threat to impose secondary sanctions on China and India, which seem to be resisting US pressure, will not change the situation by the end of the summer. “At least until October, Putin will want to fight because he is convinced that he is winning,” Walsh said. FROM FROST There is a possibility that the negotiations will agree on new negotiations later, after the onset of cold weather, which will lead to a freezing of the front in all senses around October, the author writes. "If Putin can perhaps capture the towns of Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka and Kupyansk by then, that would give him a position to winter and regroup his forces. Russia could then resume fighting in 2026," Welsh said. In addition, the journalist believes that Putin may raise the issue of holding presidential elections in Ukraine, temporarily postponed due to the war, in order to try to question the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelensky. UKRAINE FIGHTS FOR TWO MORE YEARS WITH WESTERN SUPPORT US and European military aid to Ukraine should help Kyiv minimize temporary territorial losses on the front in the coming months and force dictator Putin to seek negotiations - since the Russian occupiers will once again fail to achieve their goals, the article says. “Pokrovsk may fall and other strongholds in eastern Ukraine may be threatened, but Ukraine may see a slowdown in the Russian advance, as it has in the past, and the Kremlin may even feel the effects of sanctions and an overheating economy,” Walsh said. Moreover, as the journalist notes, Europe has already developed detailed plans for the deployment of “guarantee forces” in Ukraine. “These tens of thousands of European NATO troops could be positioned around Kyiv and other major cities, providing logistical and intelligence assistance to Ukraine as it rebuilds, and creating enough of a deterrent that Moscow decides to leave the front lines as they are. That’s the best option Ukraine can hope for,” Welsh wrote. DEFEAT OF UKRAINE AND THE WEST Putin may press on cracks in Western unity - after a possible meeting with Trump that would improve US-Russian relations but could leave Ukraine to its fate. "Europe can do everything it can to support Kyiv, but without American support it will not be able to turn the tide. Putin may see small gains in eastern Ukraine turn into a slow rout of Ukrainian troops in the flat, open terrain between the Donbas and the Dnieper, Zaporozhye, Kiev," Walsh believes. European countries believe that it is better to fight Russia in Ukraine than later on EU territory, the author notes. "But European leaders ultimately lack the political mandate to engage in a land war in Ukraine. Putin is moving forward. NATO cannot come up with a unified response. This is a nightmare for Europe, but it is already the end of a sovereign Ukraine," he writes. RUSSIA'S DEFEAT “Russia could continue to make mistakes, losing thousands of troops a week, gaining relatively little, and watching sanctions erode its alliance with China and revenues from India. Moscow’s sovereign wealth fund could shrink and revenues could fall,” Welsh predicts. Moreover, the journalist believes that in such a scenario, President Trump will become a “lame duck” (an American idiom meaning a politician whose authority, influence or effectiveness has significantly declined), and, after the midterm congressional elections, the US will return to traditional foreign policy norms, which consist of confronting Russia and its ally China. “In this scenario, the Kremlin may face a point where its resistance to the banal inconveniences of reality and the economic hardships of its own people becomes toxic,” Welsh writes. Such political miscalculations ultimately led to the Soviet Union's fruitless occupation of Afghanistan in another war of its own choosing. Similar moments of unexpected Kremlin weakness have already been evident in the war in Ukraine, when Wagner PMC chief Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently accidentally led a short-lived uprising in the capital, the journalist believes. But the problem with this scenario, Welsh argues, is that it remains the best hope for Western policymakers, who can neither accept NATO countries entering the war fully to help Ukraine win, nor Kyiv being able to push back the Russian army militarily. “None of the options are good for Ukraine. Only one of them means the actual defeat of Russia as a military power and a threat to European security. And none of them can come about as a result of Trump’s meeting with Putin alone – without Ukraine later becoming part of some agreement,” the journalist concluded. |
| Posted by:badanov |