War in Ukraine could last at least another year
Political scientists have answers for you about military developments in the war in Ukraine, the efficacy of sanctions, and how to end the war.
A year ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, marking a major escalation in a long-smoldering armed conflict that began in 2014 with Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In the past year, several hundred thousand soldiers have been killed on both sides, and the conflict has created Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
On February 21, 2023, President Joe Biden marked the anniversary with a surprise visit to Ukraine. Hein Goemans, a professor of political science at the University of Rochester and the director of the Peter D. Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation, called the visit “a loud and clear signal to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, and to the rest of the West, that the US is in it for the long haul.”
So, what is happening in Ukraine now? And when will the war end? Not soon, according to Goemans, an expert on how international conflicts begin and end.
“If Putin left the stage, things could change quickly,” he says. “But we’re still in the informational stage of war, both sides are still trying new strategies.” For peace negotiations to start, “both sides must know, more or less, how the war would end for them.” And that could take from a year to a decade, he adds.
Randall Stone, a political science professor and the director of the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies, predicts the war will last at least another year.
Putin “is committed to continuing the fighting because ending the war without a victory is riskier to him politically than continuing,” says Stone. “He calculates that Russia’s immense resources will grind down Ukrainian resistance eventually, and presumably continues to hope that NATO will eventually tire of the conflict and pressure Ukraine to make concessions.”
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