Ukraine conflict: military expert commits himself - "Putin will lose this war"
Created: 03/12/2022, 19:38
By: Jonas Raab
The corpse of a civilian: The population of Ukraine has again come under increased fire from the Russian army.
© picture alliance/dpa/AP |
Felipe Dana
The Ukraine war seems to have stalled on the Russian side.
But what's next?
Security expert Martin van Creveld provides important answers.
Kyiv/Moscow - The Ukraine war raises many pressing questions: Is a nuclear strike an option for Vladimir Putin?
How and when will the Russian invasion end?
What does this or that scenario mean for the Ukrainian people, for the Kremlin authorities, for Europe and for the whole world?
The Israeli security expert Martin van Creveld is one of the most renowned military historians in the world, although he is not without controversy in Germany due to his appearance at an AfD event.
In science, military expertise is still highly regarded.
In an interview with
t-online
, Creveld gave a number of assessments of the current war events in Ukraine.
Ukraine war: Security expert Creveld believes in long-term Putin defeat
The Russian army is very strong, says Creveld: "Ukraine has no chance against Russia with its poorly equipped armed forces." That is why Putin will also succeed in encircling the large cities in Ukraine, putting them under artillery fire and taking them.
And yet the security expert is convinced: "Putin will lose this war."
Creveld justifies his thesis with long-lasting guerrilla fighting that would begin after the fall of Kyiv and would only allow the actual war to start: "100,000 Russian soldiers are not enough to conquer a country like Ukraine, which is twice the size of Germany occupy.” According to Creveld, the only lasting peace solution is a neutral Ukraine: “It will never join NATO.
I don't see any other solution.” On the other hand, he sees EU accession as unproblematic.
Ukraine war fuels fears of Russia's nuclear strike: "Unrealistic and realistic at the same time"
In the t-online
interview , Creveld
recommends restraint in the West.
A no-fly zone, which the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj demands from NATO, would therefore be "suicidal." Due to a spiral of escalation that would trigger such a NATO action, the end of the world could mean.
Creveld is also alluding to Russian nuclear strikes: He considers them unrealistic and realistic at the same time: “Unrealistic in the sense that Putin, like everyone else, knows the consequences of such a step.
Realistic because he could still order it in a moment of weakness or desperation.”
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If Putin ends up before the International Criminal Court in The Hague,
t-online
wants to know about the allegedly targeted attacks on a children's hospital in Mariupol and the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia from Creveld.
No, he says.
"I don't know who could bring him there." Putin is not Slobodan Milosevic, and Russia is not Serbia.
(yeah)