Russia-Ukraine Negotiations

Before the two-year anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine, defense experts widely predicted that the conflict would settle into a stalemate in 2024, leading neither side to make or lose a significant amount of territory. But just a few months into the year, Russia’s sheer amount of manpower and weaponry have enabled it to grind down Ukraine’s defenses and advance — particularly in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow captured the industrial city of Avdiivka and a number of smaller settlements in recent weeks. Russia’s recent momentum — and ongoing worries over Ukraine’s weaponry and ammunition shortages, as well as stalled U.S. military aid — are now prompting concerns that a stalemate might even be the “best-case scenario” that Kyiv can hope for this year...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill on Tuesday to lower the mobilisation age for combat duty from 27 to 25, a move that should help his country generate more fighting power in its war with Russia. The bill had been on Zelensky’s table since it was approved by lawmakers in May 2023, and it was not immediately clear what prompted him to sign it. Parliament has been discussing a separate bill to broadly tighten draft rules for months. The move expands the number of civilians the army can mobilise into its ranks to fight under martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022...

Masked Ukrainian security officers have raided properties, seized wads of cash and detained suspects in a recent crackdown on graft in the purchase of goods for the military ranging from eggs to artillery shells.  At the same time, a quieter operation is being waged by a new team of professionals including a former energy executive called Maryna Bezrukova. From her office in a gleaming business center in Kyiv, she is on a quest to save money and ensure new arms contracts are untainted...

Ukraine’s parliament has scrapped plans to give soldiers who have spent prolonged periods fighting on the frontlines the chance to return home on rotation, after passing a draft law seeking to boost the number of soldiers in its military.... Soldiers serving for more than 36 months were originally slated to be allowed to demobilize and return home, but the provision was removed from a draft law following an intervention by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, according to Ukrainian lawmakers...

Russia's armed forces have grown larger and not dwindled during its war in Ukraine, a top US general said on Wednesday. "The army is actually now larger — by 15 percent — than it was when it invaded Ukraine," US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told the House Armed Services Committee in a hearing...

Could Ukraine lose this war? For more than two years, as this country of 44 million people has fought off an all-out invasion by neighboring Russia, a spirit of stubborn optimism prevailed even amid the most frightening moments. Any notion of defeat was unthinkable, an almost taboo topic. But now the question hovers, flitting in and out of view: What if?...