By Josh Lederman and Raf Sanchez -
NBC News
WARSAW, Poland — After months of stalemate and a week fraught with symbolism, the second year of Russia's war in Ukraine will begin with Kiev, its allies and the Kremlin holding their breath for new military offensives that could drastically change the trajectory of the conflict.
Despite the missile attacks that have punctuated the winter lull and fierce fighting on the eastern front lines, there is a sense that this may have been the calm before the storm.
Both Russia and Ukraine have been planning new campaigns to seize territory, infusing a new urgency to President Joe Biden's extraordinary undercover trip to the war zone.
[Biden responds to Putin from Poland: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia”]
The battles ahead may reveal whether Moscow - after a year of military mistakes that prevented President Vladimir Putin from winning the quick victory many hoped for - has been able to successfully regroup and correct course.
However, the intensification of the fighting could also pose new challenges for the Western alliance supporting Ukraine as the main partners meet this week in Poland on the eve of the war's anniversary.
“He thought he could outlast us.
I don't think he's thinking that right now,” Biden said of Putin at the Kiev presidential palace on Monday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next to him.
Zelenskyy, speaking at the Munich Security Conference last week, warned that Russia "can still destroy many lives."
“That's why we have to hurry.
We need speed,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine, which is preparing to retake territory in the country's east and south, has spent the winter months training its rapidly growing armed forces in advanced weaponry and preparing to supply even more lethal weapons.
In Germany, US troops are training Ukrainian forces in “combined arms warfare” with artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles, while in the UK, British forces are teaching Ukrainians to fly British-style fighter jets. of NATO and to command Challenger 2 tanks.
Ukrainian soldiers prepare to fire the American M109 self-propelled howitzer at the front line, in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on February 17, 2023.Mustafa Ciftici/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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Russia has also tried to take advantage of the winter lull to mobilize hundreds of thousands of conscripts, prisoner-turned-mercenaries and other troops in an attempt to replenish a military force badly depleted by a year of war.
The US Department of Defense estimates that Moscow may have already lost half its tanks.
Now, as the Kremlin wants to show that the fighting is not over, it appears to have set its sights on capturing the remaining Ukrainian-held areas in eastern Donbas, an area that Putin has already claimed to have annexed but does not fully control. .
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Meanwhile, supporters of Ukraine, from Brussels to Washington, are watching each other to see if support for Kiev rises or falls, if American Republicans will oppose further military aid as the war drags on, if the coldness of Paris or Berlin can renew the pressure for peace and who will be the first to provide even deadlier weapons amid lingering fears the conflict will escalate into a world war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, a NATO member on Russia's doorstep, said the Western allies continue to agree with Ukraine's position that it should not negotiate its own sovereign territory with Moscow, a position that He hopes it will continue into the second year.
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“But we have to admit that without stronger and more vital support from Western countries, Ukraine will not win,” Reinsalu told NBC News, Noticias Telemundo's sister network.
The rapid advances of the Russian offensive could raise concerns about the resilience of the Western alliance as the war enters its second year.
To Putin's chagrin, Western fears that the rising costs of the war and the fallout from economic sanctions imposed on Russia will erode support for Ukraine have so far not been confirmed.
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In kyiv, Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, said the most pressing concern should be that "Ukrainian soldiers who defend Europe with their shields do not get tired."
"Otherwise, all the other European peoples and nations will have to get tired of the war," Stefanchuk asserted, suggesting that if Ukraine is defeated, other Western armies would be forced to fight Russia themselves.
However, the economic cost of the war continues to rise, as Europeans face a winter of record energy bills and a cost-of-living crisis attributed in part to the war.
[Biden announces new aid package for Ukraine on his surprise visit to kyiv]
In the United States, a group of Republicans in the newly GOP-controlled House of Representatives are calling for an immediate halt to US aid to Ukraine, as a new Associated Press-NORC poll shows American support for arming Ukraine has fallen from 60% in May to just 48% this month.
“We know that some of the people, especially the Republicans, are a little bit more reticent in terms of the amount of aid given to Ukraine,” Adrian Kubicki, Poland's consul general in New York, said in an interview.
“This is actually our job, our diplomatic job: to convince them that this is the only option and there is no alternative,” he added.
Hoping to avoid further fatigue, Biden and other Western leaders meeting in Warsaw this week intend to stress the importance of continuing to invest in Ukraine's defense, arguing that a Russia unchecked in Ukraine will be a Russia unchecked elsewhere. .
Ukrainian flags fly over the graves of fallen Ukrainian servicemen in Kramatorsk, on February 19, 2023.Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images
However, the initial success of Ukraine's planned counter-offensive, which will quickly liberate vast swathes of Russian territory, could further embolden Kiev to insist that 100% of its territory be returned to it before the war can end.
It is a position that many Western officials consider morally and legally justified, but one that could complicate the path to an eventual diplomatic resolution.
kyiv has consistently defined victory as the complete liberation of every inch of Ukraine's internationally recognized borders, including Crimea, the peninsula Russia seized and annexed in 2014.
[Biden will travel to Europe on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the challenge of maintaining unity against Putin]
Any defeat in the Crimea would be deeply humiliating for the Kremlin, raising fears that a serious threat to Russian control there could lead Putin to escalate the war further.
And while the United States insists that Ukraine has every right to fight for Crimea and has not opposed Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets there, it has remarkably stopped short of predicting that Kiev will be able to liberate the peninsula, now a heavily fortified center. for the Moscow army.
“Whatever the Ukrainians decide on Crimea, in terms of where they decide to fight, etc., Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is, at the very least, demilitarized,” US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said earlier this month. , to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Regardless of whether Ukraine opts for an ambitious tactic to liberate Crimea or for a more modest offensive elsewhere, there is no doubt that the Ukrainians enter the second year of the war feeling emboldened by their survival, having beaten early predictions that their army and their democracy would rapidly collapse.
In the Ukrainian town of Ivanchukivka, five months have passed since families took to the streets on a sunny September day to greet Ukrainian troops, applauding the end of the Russian occupation of the Kharkiv region before the winter cold hardened. largely the front lines.
Dmytro Shevchenko, 33, a pre-war DJ, stood in a small crowd of elderly people gathered in a semicircle in the snow at the entrance to the town, waiting for bread, medicine and necessities that remain sorely scarce in Ivanchukivka. even months after release.
“Even with this horrible situation, even with this war, they stay here,” said Shevchenko, who now works as a volunteer, adding that he now trusts his people more than ever.
“We feel the unity.
It's a feeling that I really can't describe, ”he concluded.
