On the eve of the third anniversary of the Ukraine Russian invasion, Vladimir Putin forces made the biggest attack with the weapon that revolutionized the war in the conflict that messed up geopolitics and lives a decisive moment after Donald Trump’s ship in the US.
Foram Lançados na Madrugada Deste Domingo (23) 267 Drones Contra AS Regants de Kharkiv, Sumi, Tchernihiv, Tcherkassi, Kirovohrad, Jitomir, Khmelnitskii, Rivne, Mikolaiv, Odessa, Zaporíjia, Polava, Dnipropetrovsk and Kiev, Com Danos Reportos nas cinco últimas.
The focus was, again, the degraded energy infrastructure of the country. The Ukraine Air Force said it was deducted 138 drones, while 119 were affected by electronic countermeasures, but it is not known where they fell. The Russians also fired three ballistic missiles.
“Ukraine needs fair peace,” wrote in X the cornered President Volodimir Zelenski, who saw Washington’s almost unconditional support in the war turn into Trump’s charges and threats, which on the fourth last (12) changed the Towards conflict when looking directly Putin.
Not only did it: 1h30min of phone call repeating all narrative points of Russia in the war: that Ukraine provoked her when trying to join the NATO military alliance and will have to accept territorial losses.
Trump even called Zelenski a “dictator without elections” and said he was dispensable in negotiations for disturbing any agreements. Indeed, Russians and Americans met without the invaded or their European partners on Tuesday (18) in Riyadh.
To soften, the American charges US $ 500 billion (R $ 2.8 trillion) in Ukrainian mineral resources as a payment for what Washington has already invested in the conflict and, it is assumed by some kind of future security guarantee.
The account came out of his head: according to what is afferred by the Institute for World Economics of Kiel (Germany), the US gave the equivalent of R $ 676.5 billion in aid, R $ 379 billion of them in armaments. In any case, conversations with Kiev about a hit continue, although this Sunday the country estimated at $ 350 billion ($ 2 trillion) the mineral reserves that are under Russian control.
The Europeans, still in shock after Trump’s deputy anti -Europeu speech, JD Vance on Friday (14) in Munich, seem to try an offensive charm about the American. This Monday (24), the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron goes to the White House, followed three days later by the British prime minister, Keir Stmerer.
Trump is expected to say to Europeans that once the US-Russian negotiation is bound, they will be called to work at the end of sanctions to Moscow and perhaps the assembly of a peace force to safeguard Kiev from future aggressions if borders be frozen as they are now. Putin doesn’t stop it, however.
Trump draws victory for Putin
A Kremlin victory is being designed after three years in which Russia was disconnected from the international payment system, ostracized in international forums and saw Putin had the arrest decreed by the International Criminal Court.
If the Russian will not come out with full control of Ukraine, they will probably have a fifth of the country under its control. Americans still want the money taken from Russians in the form of an international reserve, $ 300 billion ($ 1.7 trillion) to be applied to the Ukrainian reconstruction.
None of this was predictable even with Trump’s ambiguous and Russophyl position throughout the 2024 election campaign. “It is an endless tragedy. We fight for what? ”, Asked, by text message, Irina Makienka, a video producer who lives in Kiev.
His brother and two cousins died in the war. “They won’t come back. We were betrayed by Trump, and Zelenski now needs to leave, ”he said.
According to her, the feeling that the Ukrainian President failed has grown among young people – to the end of the year gave him just over 50% popularity, a good number, but has been over 90%.
Almost 800 km away in Moscow, another unadvised character is in a contained celebration mode. Political scientist Mikhail, who calls for surname reserve, is not a fan of Putin or conflict supporter.
“We are very excited about the simple things that can work again, but this is a country that will have to deal with the effects of war for a long time and I don’t know how Putin will behave,” he said.
He fled to Riga, Latvia, in early March 2022, leaving his parents behind in Moscow. A month ago, he returned to Russia through a third country, which he asks not to reveal, a movement he says is multiplying among members of the country’s intellectual elite who were able to leave him for opposing the war.
He lost a cousin in the war, killed in fighting last year in the Avdiivka region of Donetsk. “The military took almost three months to inform his mother,” he said.
The human cost of war in these three years is almost impossible to gauge. Both sides disclose inflated numbers, but more sober estimates speak twice the 46,000 dead soldiers admitted by Kiev and perhaps 200,000 Russians, probably more.
From a material point of view, the World Bank estimates that nearly $ 500 billion will be needed to rebuild the Ukrainian part of Ukraine.
War changed face of armies
Militarily, today Ukraine has one of the sharp armies in Europe, but with severe lack of personnel. This Sunday, he lost two more cities in Donetsk to the Russians.
Still, Western military aid jumps into the eye. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), Kiev had 987 tanks before the war. He closed 2024 with 1,158, even though he lost in all, according to the survey using open data from the Dutch site Oryx, 1,079 of these vehicles.
The Russians lost even more. The more than 17,000 armored were reduced to 9,900, but the use of the vast Soviet reserves and the resumption of production maintained the less degraded fleet of tanks: from 3,387 to 2,900. Its military spending went from 4% to almost 7% of GDP – Ukraine spends double proportionally, but nominally is five times less than the Russian budget.
Geopolitics as we all changed was altered, with the return of brute force between relevant states. Moscow’s economic alienation generated a new dynamic between Russians and the Chinese side of the Cold War 2.0, as well as actors such as India and Brazil.
The course of the unresolved confrontation, which seemed embedded in the American logic of leaving Russia bleeding, has now been challenged by Trump’s apparent alignment to Putin. Apparent because he may have still secret clauses and interests such as ward off the Russian from China.
