YEARENDER: What does 2024 hold for Ukraine?

Bangkok Post Group

More than 21 months into Russia's war on Ukraine, fierce fighting rages with no end in sight and neither side has landed a telling blow on the battlefield. Ilan Rubens explains the current state of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and the prospects of Western military aid in 2024. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00 More than 21 months into the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, fierce fighting

00:07 rages in Ukraine with no end in sight.

00:12 Ukrainians hoped 2023 would be the year the country drove Russian forces out of swathes

00:17 of occupied land.

00:19 But the front line has barely budged.

00:21 Reuters Ukraine chief correspondent Thomas Barmforth.

00:25 The main takeaway of the year is probably that there haven't been a great deal of advances

00:30 by either side during the war.

00:32 The war in Ukraine has already killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed

00:37 cities and villages, forced millions from their homes and placed hundreds of thousands

00:42 more under the Russian occupation.

00:46 Kiev's much-anticipated counter-offensive has so far proved unable to punch through

00:51 Russian defensive lines in the south and east.

00:55 Russia controls about 17.5 percent of Ukrainian territory.

00:59 Russian forces are back on the offensive in the east and they've been mounting pressure

01:03 on the town of Avdiivka.

01:05 Many of the Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted and many of them will be fighting out at the

01:09 front for almost two years.

01:12 Ukraine's own commander in chief has already described the war as at a stalemate.

01:18 President Zelensky has rejected that characterisation but it really does look very hard to imagine

01:24 that either side could quickly forge a breakthrough and change things very quickly on the battlefield.

01:32 Ukrainians know they must secure Western military aid to carry on.

01:36 And that it will be harder with the war in Gaza distracting global attention.

01:41 It's clear that there is increasing fatigue in the west on the matter of providing military

01:48 and other support to Ukraine.

01:50 The White House has asked Congress to approve a roughly $60 billion assistance programme

01:58 for Ukraine that would come through next year.

02:00 At the moment it hasn't passed.

02:02 Meanwhile in Europe, a four-year, 20 billion euro EU military aid proposal has also run

02:09 into resistance from some bloc members.

02:13 Some Ukrainians believe Russian leader Vladimir Putin will use any let-up in fighting to build

02:19 further defences and regenerate the Russian army for a new assault.

02:24 Russia is expected to hold an election in March that is widely expected to hand Vladimir

02:29 Putin another six years in the Kremlin.

02:32 Some observers think that he may feel his hands are more untied after that election

02:37 to escalate his war effort.

02:39 That could include, for instance, mobilising more Russian men to fight in the army.

02:45 He may also decide to invest even more effort into the defence industry in Russia.

02:52 The strain of the war is likely to wait on everyday Ukrainians, for many of whom war

02:57 fatigue has become a fact of life.

03:00 I spoke to an internally displaced person from Kherson, his name is Oleksiy.

03:04 He fled his hometown of Kherson in April 2022 when it was still under occupation.

03:10 He's now currently living in Kiev and he has no plan to go back home to Kherson because

03:15 he fears that it's still getting pounded by artillery and he thinks that it's too dangerous.

03:21 I think there's a lot of frustration, a lot of fatigue and also a sense that it's going

03:25 to be a long, long time until anything goes back to anything resembling normal currently.

03:30 If everything stays as it is, it doesn't look like Russian forces have any appetite for

03:36 peace talks.

03:37 The Ukrainians themselves, their official position is that they want all of their country

03:40 back, every single inch of occupied territory to be returned to Ukraine.

03:45 And their position is that peace talks cannot take place until Russia has left their territory.

03:50 So it really does seem that neither side is ready for peace talks and therefore it seems

03:57 unlikely that the war is going to end any time soon.

04:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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