Analysis: what happens if Russia invades? Russia

Almost four million Russians have travelled away from Russia so far in 2022, many choosing not to return for the time being. It is the largest such exodus since the Bolshevik revolution and could result in an enormous country-wide brain drain; something that is already being experienced in the IT sector. The myth of the invincible Russian military machine has evaporated in the space of a few weeks. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-doesnt-ukraine-bomb-russia.html had to withdraw from the vicinity of Kyiv and were beaten off in many other locations. Corruption, a disease at the heart of the Russian state, displayed itself on a grand scale in the conduct of the military operation. Russia’s human losses are enormous and, in spite of censorship, becoming known to the Russian public.

• Many people in Kyiv have sought shelter in underground metro stations.
• But they've repeatedly said there will be no Nato "boots on the ground" because Ukraine is not a Nato member.
• As fighting intensifies, cross-Channel shipping is attacked by Russian submarines, and long-range conventional missiles strike Dover and Southampton.
• British ministers predict a long-running “quagmire”, with Russia suffering significant casualties.
• His declared goal on 24 February 2022 was to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine and not occupy it by force, days after backing independence for eastern Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian proxy forces since 2014.

This is necessary, as Ukrainian weapon stocks composed of Soviet-standards equipment are depleted, and availability of such arms outside Ukraine is limited too. Crowdfunding military equipment for Ukraine – already successful in Lithuania – shows that the general international public is sympathetic and wants to play its part in this process. To help Kyiv to counterbalance Russia’s size advantages and scorched earth tactics, Allies should consider more military exercises to show NATO’s readiness and strength. Creative solutions are also quickly needed to undermine the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, facilitating the export of grain. More structurally, it has broken the entire security architecture built patiently on the continent over many decades, including international commitments agreed in the last 30 years. As the top UK general recently observed, it is dangerous to assume that the war on Ukraine is a limited conflict.

Russia has the world's largest supply of operational nuclear warheads – at around 4,500

But there is still a chance Moscow could find itself in a costly and prolonged guerrilla war that, in the long run, may turn victory into defeat. Calling Nato "evil", he effectively told Ukraine it had no right to exist as a sovereign nation independent from Russia. But be we warriors or wimps, now is the time to start facing up to the prospect, says Ed Arnold, a European Security Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too. More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels. "Russia can pose a major conventional military threat to NATO for the first time since the 1990s in a timeframe set to a considerable extent by how much the Kremlin invests in its military." Republicans in Washington have been holding up new funds for Kyiv over demands for border control, leading to concerns over the reliability of American support. That's what could happen if the United States cut off military aid to Ukraine and Europe followed suit, according to a prominent thinktank. But the alliance has also made clear that it believes that Ukraine has a right to make its own decisions as a sovereign nation, and it is not willing to give Russia a veto on Ukraine's future.

Simple guide to Ukraine crisis in maps

This means were Russia to attack a neighbouring Nato state such as Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, for example, it would then be at war with all 31 Nato members. Mr Putin has frequently warned other countries against intervening in Ukraine. A Russian vessel that features prominently in the documentary is known to have navigated waters off the coast of Scotland in November 2022 that are packed with oil and gas pipelines and communications cables. Some sanctions will take weeks, even months to bite, but some are now hitting Russia's currency, stocks, the wealth of the rich oligarchs and sadly the lives of the poorest.

• A large diversion of citizens to military duty would leave gaps in the workforce to be filled, be it guarding food warehouses or building trenches and bomb shelters.
• Russia has captured the town of Soledar this year and has hopes of seizing the eastern city of Bakhmut on the road to key cities to the west, and of recapturing territory it lost last autumn.
• The UK does have plans to extract the Queen, other members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister and top officials from London in the event of a nuclear attack, and into bunkers dispersed across the country.
• But there've been reports of Russian convoys running out of fuel, Russian soldiers losing the will to fight, and Ukrainians fighting back - both soldiers and civilians, some armed only with the force of patriotism.

It is regrettable - and sadly predictable - that we must gather today to condemn Russia’s latest wave of aerial attacks against the Ukrainian people. Ambassador Neil Holland condemns Russia's air attacks this week on Kyiv and Kharkiv, as well as the spate of attacks on Ukraine over the past month. In 1968 the Government developed an operation, codenamed Python, to disperse the key figures in groups to different parts of the country, including on yachts at sea.

Ukraine's shift to the West

With every day, more of the combat troops and heavy weaponry marshalled along Ukraine's borders move forward in all directions, but not as fast or as far as many expected. William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and U.S.-USSR negotiations to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. While Ukrainians may be unable to defeat a large-scale invasion, they could inflict high casualties, a sensitive issue in Russia.

• The threats facing Europe today are too pressing for our military to be reduced to this state.
• US President Joe Biden said Mr Putin had "chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering".
• The dependence of many European countries on Russian gas may also contribute to upward pressure on commodity prices as they seek alternative supplies from elsewhere.
• The logistics of training a “Citizen Army” are also formidable, according to one former Territorial Army (TA) soldier.
• Not the full-scale war that has bombed civilians across Ukraine and left more than 13 million either as refugees abroad or displaced inside their own country.