What’s next in the war in Ukraine?

“It should be a crucial year,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 44, said at the start of the week, summing up his expectations for 2023. But what will the new year bring for the two warring factions? An overview.

David versus Goliath – that was the idea of ​​the war in Ukraine. In any case, this has come true in part: “little” Ukraine stands firm against big Russia. Some experts even believe that Ukraine clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield.

The situation around the city of Bakhmut is representative of Ukraine’s fortitude – for weeks Russian troops have been gritting their teeth on the front line, the Ukrainians are successfully defending it.

However, Putin’s forces have employed an insidious tactic, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – bombing the country in the cold and darkness. But while Ukraine is backed with weapons by the West, Russian supplies are steadily dwindling – another advantage for the Ukrainians.

The stakes are high for the country under attack. No wonder the Zelensky government wants to end the war as soon as possible – with a victory over the aggressor. Because the longer the war lasts, the more likely adverse scenarios such as a stalemate or a partial victory for Russia become.

Ukraine is demanding that Russia withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, pay war damages and prosecute Russian war crimes. But how does she want to bring the army of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin (70) to its knees?

With Western weapons, as the Ukrainian government has repeatedly emphasized. “If the international community provides sufficient military supplies, there is every reason to believe that Ukraine will complete the task of defeating Russia in the new year,” Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, 56, said.

While Ukraine wants to end the armed conflict as quickly as possible, Putin is betting on the opposite: a war that lasts as long as possible. The Kremlin hopes that Ukrainian forces and morale will be exhausted on the one hand and that the West will be divided on the other.

The Kremlin head knows that the further away a Ukrainian victory seems, the faster Western support for the country will fade and the greater the pressure on Kiev to negotiate with the despot – an extremely favorable scenario for Russia, as they count on Ukrainian concessions there.

Because even though the Russian government has repeatedly changed its propaganda: in the end, the Russian ruler wants to overthrow the Ukrainian government, conquer large parts of the country and disband the Ukrainian armed forces. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (72) recently confirmed this to the Tass news agency.

On Christmas Eve, the “NZZ” published a report from the German Foreign Ministry, which describes two scenarios for the continuation of this war. In the first, Russia will focus on capturing the Donbass, in the second, they want to conquer all of Ukraine.

Both have in common that Russia will launch another major offensive, possibly with the support of Belarus, as the Institute for War Studies (ISW) recently reported. The timing of this offensive is not yet known, but experts expect an attack no later than spring.

The chances of success are also uncertain. But one thing is certain: “For 2023, the outcome of the Russian spring offensive will be decisive. Putin had admitted that about 50,000 of the newly mobilized troops were already on the front line; the remaining 250,000 of those just mobilized are training for next year,” security expert Michael Clarke analyzed for the BBC.

During his visit to the United States, Zelensky presented a ten-point peace plan. But the negotiations are not realistic at the moment. Military expert Marcel Berni (34) analyzed the conversation with Blick: “I don’t see any possibilities for a ceasefire or even peace negotiations at the moment.” Both sides are currently hoping for military gains in territory, making the war “not yet ripe for negotiation”.

“What is there to negotiate? A Russian withdrawal from Ukraine? Or a Ukrainian capitulation?” Berni wonders. Both are currently unrealistic due to the configuration of forces and the claims of the belligerents. The side is not very enthusiastic about the proposals Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov (54) and Foreign Minister Lavrov both emphasized that the conditions for such a plan had not been met.

Claudia Major, security expert at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), said in an interview with “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” that there will come a time when the two sides will agree to freeze the conflict. “But the political conflict has not yet been resolved. It is about the future of Ukraine, about the future of Russia, about borders and reparations, about processing war crimes, about security guarantees for Ukraine. The political conflict is therefore becoming bigger and more difficult to resolve every day.”

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (53) does not expect the war to end soon, he explains to “Puls24”. “Unfortunately, the war will haunt us until 2023.”