The past week has seen a revival of diplomacy to restart negotiations on ending the Russia-Ukraine war but prospects for a settlement appear dim. Meanwhile, Russia is intensifying attacks on Kyiv and leveraging advanced drones to try and turn the tide of the war in its favor.
The Daily Brief reached out to four CFR experts who have been tracking the war closely to get their insight on where it currently stands.
“There is no contradiction between engaging in diplomacy and escalating on the battlefield,” Thomas Graham said. “The Kremlin almost certainly calculates that increased military pressure on Ukraine will compel them to make concessions at the negotiating table to end the war. That is unlikely as long as Ukraine continues to receive military and economic support from the West.”
President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week and U.S. officials met with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev yesterday, Reuters reported. Yet no “real diplomatic progress” appears to have been made, said Max Boot.
“As long as Putin is convinced he can make progress on the battlefield, negotiations aren’t going anywhere,” he said.
Russia has ramped up aerial attacks on gas stations, data centers, food warehouses, and other civilian infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital for weeks. Yesterday, Moscow launched a deadly attack on Kyiv’s National Academy of Sciences.
These attacks seem to be part of “a larger effort to break down Ukrainian will and capacity in the course of the winter,” Stephen Sestanovich told the Daily Brief.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address yesterday that three-quarters of the aerial strikes on Ukraine Monday came from jet-powered drones, and that Ukraine was only shooting down 57 percent of these. New defense interceptors are being tested but remain in development, he added.
These new jet-powered drones are “much faster than previous generations of Russian one-way attack drones,” and therefore represent a “growing threat to Ukraine,” Michael Horowitz said. They are another example of how both Moscow and Kyiv are “innovating to stay ahead in the war,” he added.
Russia is also making moves to increase the size of its fighting force. Putin signed a decree this week to increase the size of the army for the fourth time this year. Zelenskyy warned yesterday that North Korea was preparing to deploy another ten thousand troops on behalf of Russia.
As frontline advances have slowed, and as Ukrainian air strikes on Russian territory continue, Sestanovich suggested that “each side has a similar calculation: if the front lines are frozen, attack in the rear.”
The Daily Brief will bring you the latest about the Russia-Ukraine war as it develops.
