A third year of war begins.
It starts badly for Ukraine, which had to withdraw from Avdiivka, a symbol on the former front line of 2014, a stronghold a few kilometers from Donetsk, in the Donbass, occupied for ten years by the Russian army .
Vladimir Putin has a victory to boast in his presidential election in mid-March.
After this formal deadline, the autocrat may be tempted by a new step.
“Vladimir Putin's objectives have not changed,”
explains a NATO official.
“He is not going to seek negotiations.
He still believes his war goals are achievable,”
we continue.
“But I am not sure that he receives the best information from his generals,”
adds one within the Alliance.
For Western military staffs, no side would today be able to gain a decisive advantage in the short term.
“
At this stage, we do not see
a Ukrainian collapse ,
”
explains a senior French officer.
“But the center of gravity is the will of the Ukrainian people,”
he continues, taking up a military concept, which determines the tipping point of the conflict.
“We must not stop our support,”
he concludes.
Also read: In eastern Donbass, after months of fierce fighting, the Russian army seizes the industrial town of Avdiivka
By receiving the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Élysée to sign a security agreement on February 16, the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, emphatically underlined Russia's multiple failures: Moscow is not managed to change the pro-European regime in Kiev, the Russian army was defeated and only managed to gain ground at the cost of immense human losses, Russia is paying the economic price of the sanctions imposed by the West.
In the long term, the consequences will be serious, we want to believe.
But the war is also being played out in the short term as Ukraine, short of ammunition, risks no longer being able to defend itself.
“An ego issue”
“Russia is particularly tough at the moment in the information field so as not to accept its setbacks on the conventional level,”
underlines the senior officer.
A French diplomat agrees and predicts large-scale cyber attacks and disinformation maneuvers in the coming months, with the Olympic Games and the European elections in their sights.
“There is an ego issue for Putin,”
we emphasize about the Games, where Russian athletes will not be able to appear under their banner.
As for the elections, Russia
“seeks to break the democratic processes”.
By undermining public confidence, Moscow hopes to fracture the support that Ukraine still has.
In June, the outcome of the European elections will only marginally affect European support for Ukraine.
Decisions are taken by heads of state and government and not by the European Parliament.
But, at a time when American commitment is in the hot seat, subject to the result of the November elections and the prospect of a victory for the populist Donald Trump, the Europeans will constitute a signal on the mood of societies.
Between diplomats and experts, rumors and speculations are rife.
“
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz believes that, if Trump is elected, Europe will not be able to continue supporting Ukraine.
2025 would then be worse than 2024
,” believes a German expert on defense issues.
Berlin would be tempted to advise Ukraine to open negotiations while there is still time.
Read alsoIn Russia, Vladimir Putin approaches his re-election without opponents
Resentments and disappointments between Europeans threaten to resurface for lack of an American locomotive.
France, which saw itself as a military power, does not play the role of leader in Europe.
Germany has become the continent's leading contributor.
“The Germans were economically dominant, but they disarmed.
The king is naked today,”
corrects a French official.
Wealth is not the only criterion of power, they say.
“
What matters is the will, even with a mediocre GDP
,” we continue.
“A peace dictated by Russia”
2024 will be dangerous for kyiv: the stocks of weapons that the Europeans could deliver are empty or almost empty.
The capitals, which anticipate a risk of war by the end of the decade, are tempted to supplement the arsenals for their own security.
Defense manufacturers will still need at least one year to increase their production rates, even if some see results.
Nexter, which manufactures Caesars, is capable of producing 78 cannons per year for Ukraine.
Others, like the MBDA missileer, are ordered to react.
Germany's Rheinmetall plans to open a shell production plant in Ukraine capable, in 2025, of supplying 200,000 155 mm munitions per year.
The company promises to produce, on all its sites in Europe, up to 700,000 shells per year in 2025, compared to 400,000 to 500,000 this year.
Before the war in Ukraine, it supplied only 70,000.
In his three scenarios for the future of the conflict in 2024, CSIS expert Mark Cancian judges
the “collapse”
of Ukraine
“inevitable”
if deliveries of military equipment dry up.
“Before it comes to this, Ukraine would probably accept a Russian-dictated peace to avoid greater territorial losses,”
he writes in his worst-case scenario.
In the intermediate hypothesis, the tactical impasse observed today would continue, due to a lack of new equipment capable of changing the balance of power.
Only one scenario leaves a path of optimism open, that of Western aid remaining at a sufficient level to renew Ukrainian equipment and train its soldiers.
“For this approach to be viable, Ukraine needs a theory of victory that guides its military operations and responds to the growing weariness among its supporters,”
said Mark Cancian.
To resolve this equation, Ukraine will have to unravel its internal tensions.
The mobilization law, wanted by the military to enable an effort, was rejected by the political power of Volodymyr Zelensky, anxious to maintain the support of the population.
“War is a space of friction between politics and the military,”
observes a senior French officer.
“The first one who is able to mobilize will win the war,”
he prophesies.
Peace, certainly, is not expected this year.