How and when will Russia-Ukraine war end? Pundits offer colliding forecasts

Ukraine will not be able to dislodge Russian forces and restore control over the lost territories shortly. This opinion was expressed by General Mark Milley, head of the US Armed Forces Chiefs of Staff Committee. "I don't think that's possible in the short term this year," he said in an interview with Defence One, responding to a related question.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, speaking at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung conference, generally said that the war against Ukraine could last for more than a year. "After all, this war may last for two, three, four years, which will be a challenge for all of us," the media quoted him as saying.

Such versions coming from well-known military men and politicians cannot encourage normal people around the world. After all, a huge number of countries have been suffering from this war in one way or another for over a year now. And then Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu added pessimism all around, saying that "necessary measures are being taken to increase supplies of the most needed ammunition". He held a meeting on the supply of ammunition to the troops, and said that "due to expansion of production capacities the number of products to supply the troops has increased manifold. We are talking about both conventional and high-precision types of munitions". It is reported that during this working meeting the issues of further increasing the supply of Russian troops with ammunition were discussed.

If Milley and Scholz's predictions are correct, Ukraine has a long way to go to withstand the onslaught from the East. And the West and all sympathetic countries should support it with all their might. But how appropriate are these pessimistic expectations? After all, it is possible to hear other, contrary opinions saying for example that Russia itself will not endure and that by the end of the year, its troops will be defeated and pushed out of Ukrainian territory. Is any more or less adequate prediction of how and when this war will end possible in the current situation?

Foreign analysts answered these questions for Caliber.Az.

Israeli military expert David Gendelman says he is a principled opponent of predictions, and this war has shown once again that predictions are a thankless task. Especially when it comes to the question of when the war will end.

"We can talk about what is possible to achieve at this stage of the war. At the moment the AFU is gearing up for an offensive and accumulating forces and means for it. Even if this offensive in one or two operational directions is successful and part of the territory is liberated and some formations of the Russian Armed Forces are defeated, this does not yet mean a complete defeat of the entire Russian grouping and complete liberation of all Ukrainian territory - for this, according to available information, Ukraine still lacks forces," the expert noted.

A complete defeat will require a series of successive offensive operations with preliminary accumulation and preparation of forces and means, he said.

"The possibilities of these next operations will directly depend on the success of the operation that is being prepared now: what kind of losses the parties will suffer, what lines the AFU will reach, what operational and strategic achievements will or will not be, what reinforcements, including in Western weapons, military equipment and ammunition will be needed, whether additional mobilization will be needed, how Russia will react, including in terms of its mobilization, etc., etc. Only the results of this phase of the war will allow us to judge how the next phases may proceed. And so from stage to stage, it will be possible to reach the last stage of the war, but nothing can be said about it yet, because there are still many stages before it," Gendelman explained.

Mykola Polyovyi, doctor of political science, professor at the chair of political science and public administration of Donetsk National University named after Vasyl Stus (Vinnytsia), said that it is difficult for any researcher to be objective in forecasting such events and processes, which concern the lives of millions of people and also have a strong emotional connotation. In addition, the quality of a forecast is affected by the personal eco chamber of its author and the degree to which the forecasting process can be viewed from the outside.

"From this point of view, any forecast given by Scholz, and even more so by Milley, should prove to be closer to reality than that given by Ukrainian or Russian researchers or politicians, for example.

Finally, we should not discount the consideration that the quoted projections by Milley and Scholz do not claim to be such in the full sense of the word, but only demonstrate their views on the issue, expressed in a particular context. And by context, I do not mean just the moment or place of answering the question, but the wider context of these officials' perceptions of how and what to prepare the citizens of their countries and allies for.

Let's try to deal with the grounds for pessimism: I think we should immediately put beyond the scope of consideration statements by Russian officials like Shoigu, which, as the practice of recent years has shown, by definition cannot be truthful and are most likely part of propaganda for both internal and possibly external use. Together with Patrushev's statements about Russia having a "miracle weapon" capable of destroying all enemies, Shoigu's statements are quite in line with the overall efforts of information and psychological influence on Ukraine and the countries supporting it. In addition, the statistics of recent weeks show a decrease in the total number of shelling by Russian invaders, and the images appearing online of increasingly obsolete equipment being transported by the Russian Federation towards the front do not seem to confirm Shoigu's words," says the professor.

At the same time, it is undeniable that there is still an unimaginably large number of people in Russia who are capable of being drafted under various pretexts into the Russian army and are unable to resist being sent to the front, he said.

"We are talking about at least about 10-15 million age-appropriate men. In addition, every year about half a million of yesterday's school-leaving boys are and will continue to be added, further indoctrinated by Z-propaganda and 'besieged fortress' military hysteria in the years to come. The motives and considerations of all these subservient soldiers may vary widely, from bloodthirsty and barbaric to herd-instinctive, but the fact remains that for a very long time, the Russian army will be able to be replenished with large numbers of 'cannon fodder'. The readiness of the Russian military to use them as 'cannon fodder' was clearly demonstrated during the last few months near Bakhmut. It is hard to imagine that anything can change here on the horizon for at least 4-5 years without some extraordinary events.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, a significant proportion of Ukrainians were reasonably convinced that once the Russians knew the cost of their invasion, once they knew the number of dead and maimed occupiers, they would at least stop supporting the war and maybe even (how naive we were then!) sweep away the regime that started the war. Last year's experience showed that even if the number of ideological volunteers declined slightly, there was still an enormous percentage of them who were prepared to go to the slaughter under duress. Even now, when there is apparently no settlement in Russia where killed occupants have not been brought, no tendency can be seen to change the situation - they will willingly go to the trenches near Bakhmut, they will willingly attack machine guns under threats of barrier troops, at best they will publish tearful videos on the Internet asking for better weapons and supplies (... so they can be more effective in destroying the "Ukranazis").

It is also hard to deny that Russia has colossal stockpiles of weapons, not new, but rather old, which nevertheless are still capable of killing. Combined with the previous consideration this means that for at least 4-5 years (or rather more) Russia will have the physical ability to supply a huge mass of manpower to the front lines armed with old but still dangerous weapons," says the doctor of political science.

In order to prevent all these newly imported occupants from moving further into Ukraine, to destroy them or push them off its territory, the Ukrainian army will need a comparable number of different types of weapons, either a comparable number of soldiers, which Ukraine does not have, or a compensating quality of weapons it uses, says Polyovyi.

"So far, as can be seen, such a balance exists - a comparable quantity with a bias towards the quality of weapons used by the Ukrainian army over its Russian counterparts, with, as a rule, fewer soldiers deployed on the line of contact.

For several reasons that have been frequently discussed for almost a year now, Western countries are not supplying the Ukrainian army with many or very many weapons at once, but it is clear that those supplied so far are sufficient to maintain the balance described above. Unfortunately, it is also clear that even the hypothetical supply of more weapons will not solve the problem of quickly destroying the occupiers - all those potentially remaining 10-15 million invaders will be brought to the front just as gradually until the war is over, and just as gradually they will be destroyed by the Ukrainian armed forces. But there is a flip side to this bundle, which represents Putin's last hope of victory - one cannot rule out the possibility that if suddenly, for some reason, Western countries stop supplying arms to Ukraine, defeating the 'longer' Russian army becomes almost impossible and Ukraine is forced to ask for peace on Putin's terms. And it is precisely Scholz's interview that I see as an important positive signal that this probability is tending towards zero.

Back to the assessment of Russia's ability to continue the war and not collapse. There are probably three hopes for those who want an early defeat for Russia: 1) a collapse of the Russian economy, 2) a social uprising triggered either by the situation at the front or by the same collapse of the economy, described by the average man as an "empty fridge", and 3) a palace coup or a revolt of the elites.

Unfortunately for the civilised world, Russia's economy has enough margin of safety not to collapse quickly. Yes, production tied to foreign components will gradually or quickly come to a halt, but there remains a fairly large range of low-level production, as well as weapons production, which may be limited to old stocks or tied only to components from the domestic market. Combined with a reduction in metal exports due to sanctions, for example, there is even an oversupply of metals for domestic consumption. Due to the reduction of high-tech industries, the energy system will remain sufficient or even oversupplied for a long time to come. So, for example, Russia will be able to maintain a mid-20th century level of technological industrial production, like welding tank turrets, for at least another decade. Claims to be a superpower from a country that happens to have only six machine tools for boring gun barrels are laughable, but as long as those tools remain in operation Russia could even produce new guns, albeit not at the speed Shoigu has announced. Russian industry, therefore, because it is old but big, also has at least another ten years to spare before industrial collapse occurs. Moreover, the simultaneous withdrawal of up to half a million working-age men from production has so far created an unprecedentedly low level of unemployment in Russia, against the background of even shrinking production. And the military industry seems to be experiencing a considerable shortage of labour. It cannot be called economic growth for the whole country but there is a local economic growth in the armament industry", says the expert.

Food production in Russia, as it turned out, is highly dependent on foreign seeds and other related material, but here, too, on the one hand, Western countries do not want to look like barbarians and have not yet banned the export of seeds, on the other hand, the hypothetical transition to domestic material will greatly worsen yields, but will not turn Russia into a country doomed to starvation overnight, he said.

"With all of the above, one should not discount possible assistance from the same or similar regimes - Iran, China and North Korea. Even with the support of China alone (albeit at the expense of the hidden or open sale of Siberian subsoil to it), Russia is quite capable of reproducing the specific experience of the "Cuba-USSR" bond, but in the role of Cuba.

It is obvious, that Russia will quickly reach the level of economic development of 1990, 1970 and 1950, but it is difficult to argue, especially with elderly people, that it was impossible to exist on that level too. And all the while Russia, let me remind you, will have a stock of people who can be armed and driven into the occupying army without fear for the regime.

Social revolt, as shown by the attitude of the Russians towards the return of their soldiers in coffins, under present conditions seems even more fantastic than the collapse of the Russian economy. If even the deaths of loved ones result, in the extreme, in rare public complaints from their relatives about delayed posthumous payments, then to expect a revolt of 'empty refrigerators' seems all the more over-optimistic.

Thus, the only hope for optimism is the expectation of an 'elite revolt'. Unfortunately, Putin's bodyguards seem to be better organised than those of Emperor Paul I, whose snuffbox murder was remembered all last year in the hope that at least that was something the Russian elites 'could repeat'. As we can see, they could not. The International Criminal Court's publication of Putin's arrest warrant on March 17, 2023 offers some hope of the snuffbox being found. So far, however, one has to state that the current Russian elites are 'fine with it' or at least fine enough not to feel the need to risk their lives in a palace coup. Apparently, one should not overestimate the independence and self-sufficiency of the current members of the Russian elite - Putin seems to have succeeded in building a regime in which the well-being of the elites is achieved, and perhaps to some extent guaranteed, only by loyalty to the supreme leader. A byproduct of such a system is the absence of any guarantee of income, property, and even life for members of the elite in the event of the sudden disappearance of this leader.

Strictly speaking, Putin's hypothetical liquidation or surrender to ICC warrants would by no means guarantee the end of the war, but it offers the Russian elite a convenient chance to seize the moment to lay all the sins of the regime and the occupying forces at Putin's feet and begin negotiating normalization terms with the West. And here there is a danger that the elites may decide that maintaining the status quo under, for example, Mishustin, is a better option than capitulation, recognition of reparations, etc. Unfortunately, each successive day of hostilities, multiplying the destruction and deaths of Ukrainians increases the final bill to Russia and thus makes it increasingly expensive for it to voluntarily admit defeat, and increasingly likely for a new Russian power to continue the war in the event of Putin's sudden death.

It can be stated that, due to the extreme irregularity of current processes, the level of adequacy of forecasts correlates with their horizon and is inversely proportional to the degree of detail: thus, the deterioration of Russia's economic situation, the simplification and reduction of its industrial potential, and the impoverishment of its population on the horizon of 10 years appears to be quite adequate forecasts, regardless of whether the war ends tomorrow, or in several years - the flywheel of these processes has started and the result is almost inevitable. Reaching the 1991 borders by Ukrainian troops, including the liberation of Crimea on the horizon of even 5 years seems more than an adequate forecast. But the end of the war after reaching the 1991 borders is less amenable to prediction, given Russia's characteristics outlined above. And the sudden stopping of the war by Russia due to an unlikely elite revolt or an improbable mass revolt is not a prediction or even a prediction, but one of the thousands of possibilities that can be taken into account with a minimum of probability. Roughly the same as the assassination of Putin by a homemade drone.

So, much to the dismay of normal people around the world, Milley and Scholz's predictions are even more optimistic than they could be. What seems important to me about these predictions is not so much that they are, from the point of view of normal people, highly pessimistic, but that they have emerged at all. This is particularly true of the cautious Scholz: as far as I remember he has not previously given any time estimates of the course of the war. I suppose his words can be interpreted as a statement that the German authorities (and apparently the rest of the EU) have put their hopes of negotiating with Putin at Ukraine's expense behind them and are preparing their population for a long-term continuation of military assistance to Ukraine. Which, as already noted, is the most important factor in Ukraine's military victory in the war," Dr. Polyovyi summed up.