What if Russia does not win the Ukraine War soon?

There are disturbing signs that the West is serious about making this a “forever war.” The idea is even worse than it looks at first sight.

At this moment (and for quite a while already), Russia clearly has the initiative in the war between it, on one side, and Ukraine and – de facto – the West on the other. High Ukrainian officials and military officers – including the commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky and the deputy head of Kiev’s military intelligence service Vadim Skibitsky - are admitting publicly that their country is in deep trouble. Realistic observers in the West, such as Brian Berletic and the Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou, correctly point out that the West’s injections of aid cannot turn this situation around, partly because there is no way to compensate for Kiev’s lack of manpower and partly because the West itself does not, actually, have industrial resources to render support at a scale that would make an effective difference.

We also know that Russia has built up large reserves, which it has not yet committed to the fight. Moreover, there has been an intriguing shift in Russian terminology: While the term “offensive” has been avoided for a long time – with Russia categorizing its territorial gains as the result of a strategy of “active defense” – it has now popped up officially. The Russian Minister of Defense is reported to have spoken of the need to step up supplies to the front in order to “maintain the required pace of the offensive.” This may or may not have been a deliberate signal. It could also be a simple way to keep Ukraine and the West guessing. Yet, taken together with recent Russian advances and other operations – such as air strikes on Odessa and Kharkov/Kharkiv – it could mean that Moscow will launch a major offensive either this spring or summer, as many observers are expecting.