What to expect next in the Ukraine war

If Germany-France do a deal to keep Russian oil and gas flowing, the US will be mostly on its own in backing Kiev

Some experts see Russia slowly winning in Ukraine. Others such as Britain’s chief of its defense staff and armed forces, Sir Tony Radakin, claim that Russia has already lost the war and continues to struggle with land combat effectiveness.

Either way, Russia is consolidating its position in the Donbas and is pausing its main effort to rest, regroup and fortify its ground forces. When Russian forces resume fighting, there are reasons to believe that Russia will annex large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine and even threaten Kiev.

Reading the tea leaves is difficult because some of the weapons provided by the US have helped the Ukrainians stave off defeat.

There are numerous reports that the US HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) delivered to Ukraine, now up to eight units according to the Pentagon, has been highly effective against Russian forces.

Reports indicate the system has taken out at least one Russian command center killing many senior Russian officers and knocked out at least two important ammunition dumps as well as damaged Russian air defense and artillery rocket systems.

At the same time, the Russians have expanded their strike area using the Kalibr 3M-54 cruise missile. Five Russian Kalibr cruise missiles crashed into the town center of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, killing at least 23 civilians and wounding another 100 or more.

According to the Russians, the attack was against a gathering of the Ukrainian Air Force and foreign weapons suppliers and the Kalibr missiles were reportedly launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea. There are no confirming reports as yet of dead senior Ukrainian Air Force officers or foreign contractors.

In the past week, in a surprising move, the US Embassy in Kiev, which was reopened in May, has told all Americans in Ukraine to leave using “privately available ground transportation” as soon as possible and to do so on their own as the embassy is not able to provide assistance. The embassy also warned Americans not to gather in large groups or anywhere they could be targeted.

The US Embassy notification is quite striking and suggests considerable worry that Russia will target US citizens or even that the US Embassy believes the war is going the wrong way and remaining in any part of Ukraine is gravely dangerous.

Russia has started an extraordinary emergency session of its legislature, the Duma. So far that legislative session has not produced anything definitive about Russia’s intentions in the Ukraine war, but it may yet.

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned that Ukraine could lose its sovereignty if the war continues.

“The refusal of the Kiev regime and their Western masters from peaceful negotiations does not affect the plans and actions of our country in any way. But this refusal directly affects the prospects for preserving Ukrainian statehood as such. In fact, by these actions, the Kiev regime creates the conditions for Ukraine to disappear as a state in the future,” Volodin declared.

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