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Security correspondent, BBC News
Whatever the words are used to frame the plans that arise from the Sunday summit of 19 European leaders in London, the high fire, the truce or the peace plan, the challenges that are coming are enormous.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, together with French president Emmanuel Macron, I hope this is the plan to eventually bring durable peace to Ukraine.
In his heart is what Sir Keir is calling “Coalition of the provisions”Those who would help guarantee peace in case an agreement is reached.
But what are the obstacles and how easily they can be overcome?
First, can the exhausted armies of Europe and the half -empty arsenals gather anything that approaches a substantial deterrence to deploy in Ukraine? What nations, apart from the United Kingdom and France, will be willing to send forces to such an uncertain scenario given doubts about the support of the United States?
Ukrainian president, VolodyMyr Zelensky, has said that he would need an international force of Up to 200,000 troops To keep a fire along the 600 mile contact line (960 km) between the two opposite armies, Russia and Ukraine.
Although that figure is tremendously optimistic, the Ukrainian leader is right to evaluate how many would be needed to act as a sufficient deterrent element for any future Russian incursions.
Actually, Europe will have difficulty finding even a third of that number, such is the effect of decades of running through its military, years after the dividend of the Peace after the Cold War should have ended.
The aerial power would be crucial. This is so much for what is known as ISR (intelligence, surveillance and recognition) and to repel future Russian incursions.
It makes no sense to have a troop troops brigade sitting in part of the high -fire line if thousands of Russian troops and armored vehicles are through a gap 100 miles away and there are no suitable means to repel them.
The United States has a great capacity in intelligence signs, Sigint, as well as air-air fuel refueling, without which a purely European force would fight. A recent report by the group of experts in London, the International Institute of International Affairs (IISS) declared:
“The dependence of Europe in Washington’s military capacities, especially critical facilitators such as ISR and the refueling Air-Aire fuel, will make the search for” independence “a great challenge without a great investment in those areas.”
He continues to say that: “The United States also contributes more than half of all land attack aircraft and NATO fighter.”
In summary, gathering a credible deterrence to protect Ukraine would be extremely challenging, if not impossible, without a US military security copy.
Donald Trump likes to say that wars are not started, he stops them.
The last thing you want to do at this time is to commit US troops and air power to an unstable notional line of high the fire that has the potential to explode in a shooting war that drags NATO forces.
Instead, he has telegraphic his preferred way to finish this war, which is for Cut an agreement directly with Russian President Vladimir Putinone by one.
The objective of Sir Keir is that Europe produces a proposal of high credible fire that can then be presented to President Trump with hope, and would emphasize that word “hope”, which then agrees to provide An American military support.
Until now, that seems unlikely.
Why would the hell do it? – Some would discuss.
Their land forces are winning on the battlefield, although at a horrible cost in human life and Ukraine has lost its greatest ally in this war: the United States.
Without military support from the United States, Ukraine will be very hard to retain Russian troops in the east and southeast. Without US patriots missiles, its cities will be even more vulnerable to Russian mass missile attacks.
President Putin has always made it clear that he will not accept the presence of NATO member troops in Ukraine. Now that he has an ally in the White HouseIt is less likely that he would give up at this point unless President Trump can offer him an important incentive in return.
The conclusion in all this is that the Kremlin has not renounced its maximalist objectives for Ukraine, which eventually is bringing the entire country back to the Moscow orbit, replacing Zelensky with a flexible pro-ruso puppet.
At least, it is unlikely that he gives his central demand that Ukraine yields permanently not only those territories that Russia already occupies, in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but also renounce the adjacent cities of Kherson and Zaporizhia, who expire hundreds of thousands of thousands of residents of Ukrainians or become Russian.