“This Long Haul Of A War”

A war-winning strike against Russian forces is improbable at this point in the war; the most likely end to the war will come when the men around Putin realize that the cause is hopeless, and this will not occur until after the US 2024 election. The above is an insufficient boil-down of a very nuanced and informative conference call put on by the Economist Magazine. The Economist has been a consistent source of expert information on the war in Ukraine, drawing on almost 200 years of independent global reporting. The recent conference call elicited views that I thought would be of interest to Medium readers. The call was MC’d by Editor In Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, who was broadcasting from Kiev with Russia and east Europe editor Arkady Ostrovsky, and aided by Deputy editor Edward Carr and Defence editor Shashank Joshi in London. Defence editor Joshi started by reviewing the military progress over the past week. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:653/1*p8QzOjgGSUWs2ODhFpGz1w.png" style="height:372px; width:653px" /> He noted that small-unit infantry tactics have been used by Ukraine to carefully break through the Russian minefields. The traditional panzer-type rush by tank units does not work over such ground, and neither side has the air power to erase the mines by carpet bombing. <a href="https://barry-gander.medium.com/this-long-haul-of-a-war-45b7573b6968">Website</a>