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New recruits of the 126th Territorial Defence Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attend a military exercise at a training ground, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in an undisclosed location in southern Ukraine October 29, 2024.
Russia unleashes assault, Ukraine seeks Allied permission to hit North Koreans
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Sunday that his troops were struggling to hold back “one of the most powerful Russian offensives” in the Donbas region. Meanwhile, North Korean troops are expected to go into combat near Kursk within days. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been strongly pressing allies to allow him to launch long-range missile strikes on the camps in Russia where Pyongyang’s troops are training, but Western governments have not budged.
The timing is no accident, given the US election on Tuesday, where both Moscow and Pyongyang have a lot on the line. Former President Donald Trump has said he will end the war “in one day” and halt support for Kyiv’s war effort, essentially forcing Ukraine to concede to Russia. Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to keep backing Kyiv, but it is not clear she would allow long range strikes into Russia.
A Trump presidency has similar upsides for North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, given the two leaders’ bizarre affinity. After a brief rapprochement during Trump’s first term, Kim’s unwillingness to give up his nuclear weapons caused relations to break down between the US and the Hermit Kingdom. But Ri Il Gyu, a North Korean diplomat who defected in July, said in August that Pyongyang is aiming to restart talks with Trump. They’re reportedly aiming at sanctions relief and the repeal of the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism — without giving up their nukes — in exchange for minor concessions they think Trump could sell to his base.
People remove debris at a food market following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Donetsk shelled, AfD faces ban, Tshisekedi sworn in, North Korea tests submarine drone
27: At least 27 people were killed and 25 injured in a Ukrainian strike on the Russian-held city of Donetsk on Sunday. The attack came the same weekend as a drone attack on the Russian Ust-Luga gas terminal near St. Petersburg, resulting in a large fire but no injuries. Described as a “special operation” by Kyiv's SBU security service, the strike was aimed at disrupting fuel exports and supplies for Russian troops.
300,000:Germany is debating whether to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany party after its senior members attended a meeting where mass deportations of immigrants were allegedly discussed. While AfD's leadership denied the accusations and claimed they were being targeted with “Stasi-like” tactics, 300,000 protesters took to the streets Saturday to protest the party and its growing influence in German politics.
70: After a disputed election last December, Felix Tshisekedi was sworn in for his second term as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tshisekedi obtained over 70% of the vote, but opposition politicians claimed that many polling stations failed to open or lacked materials, and voter turnout was only 40%. Tshisekedi’s first inauguration in 2019 marked Congo's first democratic transfer of power since achieving independence from Belgium in 1960.
3: North Korea claimed to have tested a “nuclear-capable” underwater drone for the third time in response to US and South Korean naval drills on Friday. South Korean intelligence cast doubt on the claimed capacities of the drone, but with North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric in recent weeks, perhaps discretion is the better part of valor.A woman outside the damaged house of her son, who was killed the day before by shelling in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Deadly shelling, drug kingpin's jail security, Lai sighting, Sweden soccer semi, twin takeover
7: Shelling in the southern Ukrainian province of Kherson Ukraine on Sunday killed seven people, including a 23-day-old baby girl. The attack followed denials by Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar that Ukrainian forces had engaged in Russian-occupied territory in the region.
4,000: The Ecuadorian government dispatched 4,000 military and police personnel to the Zonal 8 Detention Center in Guayas province, to “establish control over weapons, ammunition and explosives within the prison.” The jail is home to José Adolfo Macías Villamar, the drug trafficker who murdered presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio claimed had threatened him prior to his assassination. President Guillermo Lasso this weekend said Macías was relocated to La Roca maximum security prison in the same penitentiary complex.
23: Photos have surfaced of former Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, the first taken since 2021. They show Lai accompanied by two guards at the maximum security Stanley Prison in Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy activist is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours each day. Lai was sentenced to more than five years in prison for fraud in 2022, but he is awaiting trial on charges of endangering national security, which could lead to a life sentence.
4: Sweden’s women’s soccer team has advanced to the World Cup semi-final — its fourth big semi in four years. They reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup, the 2020 Olympics, and Euro 2022, but they have yet to take home the crown. To make it to the finals this time, Sweden's women must beat Spain on Tuesday.
17: Must be something in the water. Primary schools in the Scottish town of Inverclyde, population 76,700, are preparing to welcome 17 sets of twins this fall. “Twinverclyde,” as the town has become known, has welcomed 147 sets of twins to its primary schools since 2013, an average of 13 sets a year.
Nuclear weapons could be used; Russia's war gets more dangerous
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I have to talk about Russia. There's plenty of news in the world. There's Brazil, there's United Kingdom, there's Iran, but no, Russia is the biggest story, and it's because we've just seen the worst week in the war in terms of escalation and danger that we've had since the initial invasion on February 24th. President Putin, after meeting with some of his closest remaining friends on the global stage, the Indian prime minister, the Chinese president, the Kazakh president, all telling him directly, "Hey, the war is a horrible idea. Please end this as soon as possible." Putin does exactly the opposite and escalates. Calls up a minimum of 300,000 additional troops in a mobilization, something he had been dragging his feet on and avoiding over the last months because he knew how unpopular it would be in Russia.
Putin also announcing annexation of four separate territories in Ukraine. By the way, territory he did not completely occupy at the time that he announced, the referenda the first time I think that's ever happened in history. But nonetheless, very clearly a significant escalation with the war in Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian people, "We are taking this land from you, you are not getting it back. We will consider it Russian territory and we will defend our territory to the death." Some 7 million people on the ground in these territories annexed some 15% of Ukrainian territory. Beyond that, we had pipelines that were suddenly sabotaged, Nord Stream 1 and 2. No hard evidence as to who is behind that, though all NATO members believe both publicly and privately that the Russian government engaged in that attack as a demonstration effect, kind of similar to what the Iranians did against Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. The largest refinery in that country saying, "We can do a lot more if you continue to behave to isolate us the way you have been."
And now of course, we also have the Ukrainians taking land back, significant counter offensives that had started a few weeks ago and are being extended in Kherson, in the south, just north of Crimea, as well as in Donetsk, part of the Donbas, which has been the focus of this second phase of Russia's special military operations. So what is all of this mean? Well, it means that Putin is increasingly really in a box. He's now announced to his own population, "We have taken this territory. We're fighting for it. It's ours. It's going to cause real sacrifice. It's going to mean that we're going to send your young men into the battlefield, and a lot of them are going to face injury and death."
The Russians don't have adequate weaponry to give them to fight this war. They don't have the time to adequately train them. Many are being sent to the front without either, and that means that they're going to continue to underperform. Though Russia can send a lot more people into the field in southeast Ukraine than the Ukrainians themselves can marshal in the near term. Meanwhile, more sanctions are coming from the West. The US, the UK have already announced some in response to the annexation. The EU will have a unanimous eighth round of sanctions later this month. No one is asking now, "Are the Europeans about to break?" Despite the fact that that's what everyone was asking a couple of weeks ago before these escalations. Whether it's the US, the UK, or the Europeans, at least for the coming months, what we're seeing is more aid for the Ukrainians, more weapons and intelligence for the Ukrainians, more willingness to do everything they can to help the Ukrainians fight and take as much land as possible before the Russians get enough troops in to defend territory and hold the line.
In other words, this is a full-fledged, not only proxy war, but increasingly has elements of a hot war between Russia and NATO. And perhaps the most disturbing piece of all of this is if you watch Putin's speech that he gave last week, or if you look at Russian state media, it is all about Russia losing land, losing in the battlefield because they're fighting NATO, because of everything NATO's doing. And so the willingness of the Russians to increasingly take the fight to NATO is growing. And of course, the more we see that, the more dangerous it gets, the greater the potential for this war to actually expand. I don't, as I mentioned, believe that we are close to a nuclear weapon actually being used in battle. But I recognize it's now possible, and I wouldn't have said that a couple of months ago. I'll tell you, after the Russian speech, after Putin speech announcing the annexations and the mobilization in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about "The Day After", which I haven't thought about in decades.
This was a movie that some of you will remember. I saw it in high school and the next day we had a day off basically where all we did was talk to local leaders and civic leaders about what would happen if there was a nuclear war. I had nightmares for months. There's no way you can watch Putin rattling nuclear savers with his singular capability to have that finger on the button to say that he is prepared to do everything possible to defend land that he will lose and not be somewhat horrified that we could, again, for the first time since World War II see nuclear weapons used in battle. Everything possible has to be done to avoid that. And yet so far, the United States and Europe have done a fantastic job in punishing the Russians. They've done a fantastic job in supporting the Ukrainians, but they've done a really poor job at deterring Putin.
They haven't been able to change his behavior. They haven't stopped him from escalating on the ground in Ukraine. And of course, the more he does that, the greater the desperation. The economic desperation, the international desperation, the domestic political desperation, that is what we are increasingly seeing from Putin. At some point, Putin needs to not be humiliated, but he needs to recognize reality.
He needs to understand that the future of Russia is not in the occupation of Ukraine. And unless he's prepared to get that and he's making it harder and harder to get that on himself, then we are heading towards a much more dangerous confrontation even that we've seen since February. So that's where we are presently. I wish I had some better news for everyone. It's going to be a very tough winter, certainly for the Europeans, even more so for the Russians, and particularly for the Russians that are being sent to the front lines. I don't envy them at all, but I wish we could find a way to deescalate. Unfortunately, for now, that appears to be not in the cards.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Risks of Russia losing: Putin, Ukraine, and potential for escalation ... ›
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Ukraine gains; Russia to escalate
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, backstage of all things, but have a few moments and wanted to give you a Quick Take on what is going on in the world. Want to get to Russia, Ukraine.
I mean, of course, over the weekend, massive amount of news after the Queen's death and King Charles in charge of the UK. And also in the United States, we had of course, the 9/11 commemorations. But actually the big news in the world is once again on the ground in Ukraine with the Ukrainians having taken a significant amount of territory with counterattacks against the Russians. This is after months of close to, I mean, just incremental grinding land gains by the Russians, taking a little more than 20% total of Ukrainian territory.
And then over the course of 72 hours, several thousand square kilometers lost by the Russians as the front lines just melted away, particularly in the town of Izium, which has been captured by the Ukrainians critical because it was the headquarters for Russian military operations in the north and half of the Donbas. And of course the Donbas is the entire focus of the second phase as the Russians have announced of the special military operations, the war in Ukraine. A lot of this is, of course, because the Russians are getting exhausted. Because they haven't been able to increase their forces on the ground. And the Ukrainians are getting better trained by NATO and they're getting a lot more weapons from NATO, and they're also fighting very courageously for their territory.
What's been the response in Russia? Well, number one, and quite interestingly, the Russians have indeed been admitting to the losses. Now, the Ministry of Defense has said these troops were intentionally redeployed to focus on core Donetsk and Luhansk defense. That is clearly not the case. In many cases, they even left their weapons as they were fleeing, and that's clearly not being planned. This is also reality that the Russians had wanted to announce annexations starting in the southern city of Kherson, which they've now had to basically postpone for the foreseeable future indefinitely, because they don't actually control enough of the territory to make that happen and incorporate that formally into Russia. So that's the first thing. Because if you watch Russian state media, there's been a lot more explanation of the fact that this is going badly for the first time, really, in the last six months. Secondly, the Russians have responded by attacking some civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, the electricity in particular, plants in Kharkiv shutting the lights off essentially.
And most of that has been gotten back on over the course of 24 hours, but still it's an effort to show the Ukrainians that they're going to be punished for the gains that they're making against the invading Russians. And then finally, you're seeing a little bit of opposition. There was first some about a week ago in Saint Petersburg, a city council, and then more recently in the last couple of days in Moscow, a city council, not enormously important politically calling for Putin's resignation. In both cases, state police are responding to these as acts of criminalities. It's not the kind of thing you're allowed to do in a dictatorship.
So what's next? Well, part of the problem for Russia is they can't get a lot more troops. I mean, short of a mobilization, which would require the Russians to admit that this is actually a war going on. Right now, it's by the way, illegal for Russians to say it's a war. You get up to 15 years in prison for that. That would be unpopular. And also keeping reservists on beyond their normal tour and pulling up more Russians into the fight would be quite unpopular on the ground in Russia. So a general mobilization seems a bridge too far. And also they wouldn't get those troops for months and months anyway. Even a more limited mobilization isn't likely to make an enormous amount of difference in the near term. Having said that, will the Russians attack more broadly? Will they go after civilian centers? You haven't seen many missile strikes, for example, against Kyiv, against Lviv in the west in recent months. Certainly they could step that up if they wanted to, but it wouldn't affect anything militarily on the ground. And finally, of course, you have the possibility, God forbid, of weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, even tactical nuclear weapons.
Again, I don't think the Russians are thinking about that at this point with the territory that they're presently lost, though, if it were to start pushing them back towards the old February 24th borders, or even more, to all of Ukraine's territory that's been occupied since 2014, leaving aside Crimea, then I think the Russians would be more willing to consider that. What they clearly need to do, of course, is negotiate. And indeed, the Ukrainians and Russians have been involved with the help of the UN and the Turks in some negotiations. That's how you got food out of Odesa and how you've gotten fertilizer out of Russia. That's mattered a lot for the world. But in terms of negotiation over the territory in Ukraine and the fight, Ukrainians think they're winning. They're absolutely not going to sit down and accept any negotiations until they're taking a lot more territory.
And it's hard to imagine Putin accepting negotiations with the Ukrainians that would show functionally that everything he's tried to accomplish on the ground in Ukraine since February has been an utter failure. So at this point, I think it's more likely you see more escalation than not. Though the place I would most focus on escalation is actually on Europe. One thing you see in Russian state media all over right now is the fact that the reason the Russians are losing is not because the Ukrainians are so awesome, but because they're fighting NATO, they're fighting against NATO economy, technology and military systems and training and intelligence and all the rest of it. By the way, a lot of that is true. Though I would give the Ukrainians a hell of a lot of credit here. They really deserve it.
But if that's the case, then the Russian willingness to push the Europeans in particular harder and shut off all the energy in the coming weeks, it seems more likely to me because they really want the Europeans to feel the pain and they want to see if they can actually divide Europe. I think that's not going to work. So maybe we can see sort of more limited escalations in the coming weeks to months, but longer term, this war is looking more dangerous, not less, even though we welcome the headlines, clearly welcome the headlines that Ukrainians are able to have some significant success in the battlefield. And of course, for all the millions and millions of Ukrainians that have been suffering so desperately through this now 200 plus day invasion, that is very welcomed news indeed.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.comEmployee at a gas station during a protest against rising fuel prices in Assam, India.
Hard Numbers: India taxes diesel exports, Donetsk citizens told to flee, France nationalizes EDF, NYC needs lifeguards
100,000: New export taxes on fuel could reduce the amount of diesel India sells abroad by as much as 100,000 barrels per day, exacerbating shortages and high prices elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Indians keep scooping up Russian oil at bargain prices.
350,000: The governor of Donetsk is urging 350,000 civilians to escape the Ukrainian province as Russia advances in its bid to seize the entire eastern Donbas region. The Russians took Luhansk over the weekend and now control about half of Donetsk.
100: France will take 100% control of the debt-ridden power group EDF. The state already owned 84%, but EDF has been sustaining huge losses after investing in more nuclear plants and footing the bill for energy price caps introduced in January. The government hopes this will help France move away from fossil fuels.
Putin improves his hand in Ukraine
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, fresh back from Tokyo, not too jet-lagged. And I have your Quick Take to get a start for the week.
And yes, more on Ukraine and the Russian war. You've probably seen the latest news that Luhansk has fallen. The Donbas, which is now the focus of the Russian war, not the entire focus, but certainly the lion's share of. It is comprised of two different administrative regions, one Donetsk, the other Luhansk. The Ukrainians had been giving a pretty solid fight, but they've been losing territory pretty consistently if slowly, over the last month and a half. And this means that Luhansk is now fully under Russian control. It has been largely destroyed. The towns that exist there and the villages are in disastrous shape, many of them with over 80% of homes damaged beyond repair. And so life there is going to be absolutely horrific, but the Russians do have the territory.
They will see that as a win at home in the propaganda machine. And Moscow is certainly moving to crank that out. Donetsk is next. More troops will be focused on that. They have a little bit more than 50% of that territory under control. And the Ukrainians are trying, as hard as they can, to get more equipment, more advanced equipment, particularly artillery, and the ammunition for it from the West. And the Ukrainian argument is that it's just not coming fast enough. Certainly, they are starting to see some of those pieces being delivered to the front lines, but it's hard. The Russians have complicated some of the infrastructure by bombing some rail lines and bridges and the rest, so it's more difficult to get that equipment into place, in the front lines. Secondly, you need to train Ukrainians on this equipment. That actually takes a fair amount of time, at least a month and most cases.
And it's not like the Americans have a whole bunch of spare equipment just sitting around. My understanding in terms of high capacity artillery is that the Americans have provided what was readily available, and now they're trying to get more in place and also create more, build more from the military industrial complex, the defense companies. The US is providing overwhelmingly the majority of the defense support and the money that the Ukrainians have gotten so far. Other allies are providing a lot, and some are doing even more in terms of percentage of GDP, but so far the US is doing most of it. So, that's kind of where you are. And I do believe the Ukrainians will be able to counteract. They might be able to take some land back, but the reality is you're looking at a situation over the next several months.
In other words, as we get closer to winter again, and I don't want to think really about winter, because it's July right now, but a lot of other people are having to because that's of course when the energy crunch becomes particularly problematic for industry and for consumers. And you would bet on the Ukrainians having lost most of the Donbas, at least half of it, probably more at that point. Maybe the Ukrainians can retake the city of Kherson, which is above Crimea, and that's the area where the water had been cut off by the Ukrainians when the Russians took Crimea. The problem the Ukrainians will have there is, unlike the Russians who do smash and grab in their attacks, the Ukrainians don't want to destroy and intact city. So when they're attacking Kherson, they're going after military targets, they're going after sort of outside of the city primarily. It's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
It is of course their territory and it's their people, so you completely understand why they're doing it, but it makes it harder for them to attack effectively, especially if they don't really have pinpoint artillery, drones, and the rest. So, what that means is over the next few months, it still looks like, from Russia's narrow perspective, not their initial war effort and not their initial war goals, which they failed at completely, but their new much more narrow war goals, they are increasingly in a position to say that they've been able to accomplish that, with all sorts of casualties, which will indeed upset a lot of Russian families over the coming years, and with massive damage to the Russian economy. But still, Putin is clearly feeling better about where he sits vis-a-vis Ukraine today than he did a month ago, two months ago, three months ago. That's the reality.
There's big efforts to continue to further negotiations. That's right now. The United Nations and the Turks are at the lead between Russia and Ukraine to try to be able to get food out, to unblock the major port of Odesa. Those negotiations have slowed. I wouldn't say they've stalled, but the principles involved are much more pessimistic now than they were even a few weeks ago. President Biden himself was surprisingly upbeat at the G7 specifically on this, personally upbeat, in his private conversations with some of the other G7 leaders, but the White House advisors don't share that optimism, and frankly, neither do I, because I don't know what you give the Russians, either in terms of Belarus sanction reduction or Russian sanction reduction that would be remotely plausible that would make the Russians willing to allow these shipments out, which means we're probably going to hear more about NATO being willing to provide mind sweepers, and also escorting ships with humanitarian purpose to get food out.
And look, this clearly would be the most hostile act that NATO would have taken directly against Russia since the war has begun, but it's not nearly as hostile as a no-fly zone where you have aircrafts that would have to shoot down Russian jets, or sending troops directly on the ground in Ukraine to defend territory. This is about escorting ships, not intending the fire and a court on that would allow for humanitarian efforts to get food to people that most need it. And I think the US wouldn't want to do that by itself, but I've already heard from a number of members of Senate in the House who are pushing for that pretty strongly, Democrats and Republicans, by the way. And I know there are some NATO members that would be interested in joining if the Americans said they want to see it happen.
So, when this diplomatic effort probably fails, I think that's the thing we're going to see next. We'll see where that goes. I mean, the Russians, we've already seen that Sweden and Finland joining NATO, being given the official invitation. And the Russians said that there would be military consequences. There have been no such consequences, because their bluff has been called. And while there are horrible consequences every day for the Ukrainians that will continue for generations, that's very different from the Russians opening a larger two front war against NATO, more broadly. And so on this, frankly, I'd be inclined to say, go for it, work to get those mines swept, and work to get the food out, and help the Ukrainians too. And that money can then, of course, all go to Ukraine.
So, that's kind of what's most interesting right now. I understand completely why the Ukrainian government is concerned, that if they don't get the war better situated from their perspective by winter, life gets a lot harder for them, because the level of pressure from the German population, the Italian population and others to provide less support for Ukraine going forward, when it's starting to really hit them in the pocketbook, is going to grow. I don't think there's significant danger of the NATO alliance actually fragmenting over this.
Remember, Ukraine is being invited to join the European Union, their candidate member. That really makes this a European war, and there will be long standing humanitarian and military support for the Ukrainians going forward. But at the same level as we've seen over the past four months? I doubt that. And more importantly, Zelensky doubts that too. And that, of course, is going to have an impact on morale. It's going to have an impact on their ability to continue to fight. And of course, then there's a question of where the Americans will be after midterm elections, and that right now is absolutely the greatest uncertainty in terms of NATO, much more than the Europeans for whom is their direct fight on the ground. That is not true for the United States.
So anyway, those are a few thoughts for right now. Unfortunately, this is going to continue for the foreseeable future, but I will be here to continue to help us all navigate it and talk about other things too. Be good.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Ukraine's long road to EU membership - GZERO Media ›
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Putin keeps his war cards close
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hey, everybody, Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to start off your week. It is, of course, May 9th, and that means Victory Day. It's when the Soviets were celebrating their defeat of the Nazis in World War II. The Russians of course, continued that after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
And today even more important in the context of Russia's invasion into Ukraine, not in any way victorious and Putin, wasn't trying to claim it was, rather, it was all about justifying what he referred to as a preemptive rebuff to NATO aggression. He talked about the Ukrainians as a Nazi regime, that they were trying to get nuclear weapons, that NATO and Ukraine were going to take Crimea back from Russia. All of which was made up from a whole cloth, but nonetheless was the basis of Putin's speech.
Some things he didn't say. First on the negative side, he didn't say that Russia has won, that they've emerged victorious, that the second military operation has been as successful as the first phase of the military operation. And that Ukraine has now been denazified, and the Russians in Donbas who had acts of genocide committed against them have been protected. Again, all would've been fake news, but Putin has control of all state media in the country. And there isn't any other kind at this point. That could have been the basis for a frozen conflict, even negotiations on a ceasefire. That's not where we are at all. That's the negative side.
The positive side, the UK and their general intelligence had come out a week ago and said that there was a plan for an announcement of a general mobilization of Russian troops. Putin did not do that, nor did he announce an escalation of broad war footing against NATO. The propaganda value against NATO continues to be high. The sense that this is a fight that is absolutely necessary for the Russians and that they have to emerge victorious, that is the case. But it's still the actual war goals for the Russians continue to be vague, giving Putin significant flexibility in how he reacts to what happens on the ground, both in Ukraine and more broadly over the course of the coming weeks and months.
So what would I say? I think that it makes me not more positive in any way about the Russia-Ukraine fight, but rather it does give us at least for the next few weeks, a little more clarity on what the parameters of the conflict are likely to be. Right now, Russia's taking about one to two kilometers of land on the ground in Luhansk and Donetsk, around the Donbas. Every day they're losing some territory around Kharkiv, which is just outside, to the northwest of the Donbas.
To the Ukrainians the fact that there is no general mobilization means that Ukraine with better arms and much higher morale, should be able to start counter attacking in the Donbas probably at some point in June. So maybe the Russians can take all of it, but then the Ukrainians are going to bring the fight to them, as they already have surrounding Kyiv and in Kharkiv.
What that means to me, at a minimum, we're talking about fighting primarily in the Donbas over the course of the coming weeks and months with not a lot of understanding of what's going to happen between Russia and NATO as Finland and Sweden join, and as we continue to see escalation in sanctions against the Russians from the G7, from the Europeans, from the United States, and as we see escalation in the military support that's being provided from NATO and aligned countries into Ukraine.
I think one important point that was raised was that Putin described in the Donbas, the Russians as fighting for their own territory. And that makes clear from Putin something that I've certainly been presuming over the course of the past two, three months, which is that the intention is to either fully recognize the expanded Donbas as independent, or to formally annex. All of which baseline are unacceptable for the Ukrainians. So making very clear that a very significant piece of Ukrainian territory is going to be permanently occupied from the perspective of the Russians. That is what Putin's goal continues to be, irrespective of how badly his troops are fighting on the ground.
Then over the course of the last few days, the fact that you've had intensified bombings and artillery and missiles against Odesa, as well as other cities across Ukraine, that is punishment of the Ukrainians for having the temerity to continue to fight against Russia, and potentially it shows that there are broader territorial goals that the Russians will have in the medium to long term. Odesa someplace I'm particularly focused on. Transnistria, which is this Moldovan breakaway province, mostly populated by ethnic Russians, which itself has declared independence from Moldova. If they were to formally break away with Russian troops and support, you would then have an encirclement of Odesa, which is Ukraine's largest port. And I absolutely think that is a significant strategic aim for Putin at this phase in the conflict, as he's thinking longer term. But again, what's so interesting about this speech is he continues to not show any cards that he doesn't feel are necessary. He wants to give himself maximum flexibility to act in an environment where things have not gone the way he has planned so far.
Beyond that, I would say that another very important point is that we continue to see all sorts of civilians getting killed. Over this weekend, a school in the Donbas that was bombed and with a lot of civilians that were using it as a place of refuge, looks like some 60 civilians have been killed as a consequence of that bombing. Obviously, not a target of any strategic value, military value to the Russians. And again, all of that is going to lead to more calls of war crimes, and a hardening of positions on the part of not just the Ukrainians, but NATO allies. The more information that comes across like this with extraordinary saturation coverage from the West, the more you're going to continue to see these countries leaning into their fight against Russia.
Final thing I would mention is that Russia is of course, fighting Ukraine and NATO here, but it's not that they're fighting NATO in a coordinated fashion. Increasingly, you have a whole bunch of NATO countries that have different goals in terms of what they're trying to accomplish in the war. All the NATO countries agree that what Russia has done in Ukraine is beyond the pale, and they should be punished, and that Ukraine should be supported. Those are table stakes. But beyond that, are you trying to destroy Russian military capability? Do you want to remove Russian troops from all of Ukraine? Does that include Crimea? Do you want undermine Putin personally? Do you want to take out Russia's generals? It really depends on who you listen to. And frankly, there are a number of governments that are coming across in some ways as more intransigent and hardliner, even what you're now hearing from the Ukrainian government itself. And that is precisely because the domestic politics in many of these countries is moving towards piling on against Russia.
When that happens, you have a lot of individual political leaders that are acting in a political entrepreneurial way, and they're paying attention to their domestic politics. They aren't necessarily coordinated in every policy. That's a problem. It makes accidents easier, and it also makes it harder to have an effective strategic policy as one NATO. I don't think it makes it easier for Russia to divide and conquer because there is so much anger and animosity from NATO, and because the Russians have already been cut off so much diplomatically, culturally, economically, and that's not going to change from NATO. But I do think that it means that the conflict is harder to resolve, and it means the potential for escalation, unintended escalation continues to grow.
So a meaningful speech by Putin. It doesn't radically change the way we think about the conflict, but does certainly create a little more specificity in latest understanding of where Putin is and unfortunately, latest understanding of where this war is going.
That's it for me. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Putin, Ukraine, and the Rat Story - GZERO Media ›
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