Less than two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s people and armed forces continue to mount a staunch — and undeniably brave — resistance against Russian forces.
But for all of Ukraine’s heart and courage in facing down multiple, sustained attacks from Russia’s military in the north, east and south of the country, many analysts and strategists believe it is only a matter of time before Ukraine is overwhelmed by Moscow’s military might.
What comes next for Ukraine could be bleak, these experts say, with many expecting a long and drawn-out conflict, noting that even in the most positive scenario — that Russia withdraws its troops and Ukraine remains a sovereign nation — Europe is unlikely to return to the prewar status quo.
CNBC takes a look at the possible outcomes for Ukraine and what might happen in each of them:
1. Patchy control
Close watchers of the Russia-Ukraine war say the fluid and rapidly changing nature of the conflict makes it hard to gauge what will happen next in Ukraine, with both Moscow’s and the West’s next moves unpredictable.
However it’s widely expected that Russian President Vladimir Putin, loathing Ukraine’s current pro-Western government and its aspirations to join the EU and NATO, wants to install a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv.
Just how and when (and if) that happens is uncertain but Eurasia Group’s base-case scenario for the next three months is for Russia to gain “patchy control of eastern Ukraine, up to the Dnipro River” and to capture the capital Kyiv after a protracted siege, and for “a Russian-backed puppet government” to be established.
Eurasia Group’s chairman, Cliff Kupchan, and colleagues added in a note Thursday that “a rump Ukrainian state” is likely to be led from Lviv, a city in Ukraine’s west and near the border with Poland, with the semi-exiled government likely to receive “heavy western support.”
The analysts predicted refugee flows of 5 million to 10 million people from Ukraine to Western Europe.
In such a scenario, Eurasia Group predicted that NATO, which has so far refused to intervene militarily in the conflict (Ukraine is not a member of the military alliance), would provide “significant military assistance to the western Ukrainian state and materiel [military materials and equipment] to support insurgency in eastern Ukraine.” But they added that this could lead to the risk of airborne clashes between Russian and NATO aircraft.
Russia’s military strategy has at times been beset with logistical problems, confusing the picture of what Russia’s main or immediate goals are.
To date, only one city has definitively fallen to the Russians since the invasion began in the early morning of Feb. 24 — Kherson — although others like Mariupol, in the south, appear to be perilously close amid food, water and power shortages.
Resistance to Russian forces is likely to get tougher as the war progresses and Russia pulls out the stops to seize more territory.
Scott Boston, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp., told CNBC on Friday that the Russians “have a whole lot of combat power left and a lot of capacity to scale up the violence, which seems to already be happening. This thing could really drag on for a long time.”
2. Purge and partition?
Some analysts agree that any patchy control over Ukraine by Russia could lead to some kind of partitioning of the country, particularly as Russia becomes firmly entrenched in eastern Ukraine — particularly in the Donbas region where it recognized the independence of two pro-Russian republics ahead of its invasion of the wider country.
Taras Kuzio, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, wrote in an article for the Atlantic Council on Thursday that Moscow has indicated that it is aiming at “the complete military conquest of Ukraine followed by a partition and a massive purge of the civilian population.”
“Putin’s apparent objective is to eradicate all vestiges of Ukrainian identity while condemning the country to a grim future as a military dictatorship locked firmly inside a new Russian Empire. This nightmarish vision tallies closely with Putin’s own stated objectives for the current military campaign along with his long record of public contempt and animosity towards Ukrainian statehood,” he said.
There are many questions over who could lead a loyalist regime in Ukraine, one that could resemble that of Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko. Kuzio noted that there has been speculation about Moscow seeking to install former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was stripped of his powers by Ukrainian lawmakers during the 2014 Maidan Revolution and fled Kyiv for Russia.
“This would be entirely in keeping with Kremlin propaganda, which has insisted for the past eight years that Yanukovych was illegally removed by a Western-backed coup,” Kuzio noted.
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Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/08/how-will-russias-war-with-ukraine-end-here-are-5-possible-outcomes.html