RUNNING UPDATES ON THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE - 15.01.2025
Including geopolitical issues affecting the balance of power in the ongoing end game war to establish our common future, a closely monitored prison planet or tolerance for diverse modes of governance.
FIVE DAYS TO GO: THE TRUMP-PUTIN MEETING WILL BEGIN THE JOURNEY TO EVENTUAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN UKRAINE, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES.
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Zelensky wants more weapons before lowering conscription age.
Kiev’s Western backers continue to pressure the Ukrainian government to address manpower shortages.
Kiev could consider further lowering the conscription age, but only after the country receives sufficient military equipment from its international sponsors, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signaled during a meeting with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Tuesday.
According to Zelensky, ensuring that all soldiers are adequately equipped must take priority before expanding the conscription base. He emphasized that the country’s armed forces face acute shortages of essential equipment, including armored vehicles and artillery, rather than personnel, as reported by Ukrainian media
“We have more than 100 brigades on the battlefield, and each of them needs to be fully staffed every day. But we are constantly facing shortages – especially in armored vehicles, artillery, and other necessary equipment,” he said, highlighting that many units are struggling due to frequent equipment failures and ongoing maintenance issues.
“Therefore, when we talk about increasing the number of our troops, we must first address the issue of adequate supplies… Our partners have all these requests,” he added.
READ MORE: Trump ‘not invested’ in Ukraine – Bloomberg
Zelensky’s comments come amid growing pressure from Kiev’s sponsors, particularly the United States, to lower Ukraine’s conscription age to 18 to bolster troop numbers.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) suggested last week that Kiev could soon comply with Western pressure to draft younger soldiers over concerns that the country’s defenses could collapse. Several Ukrainian outlets, as well as some Russian diplomats, have speculated that Zelensky is keeping that move as a last-ditch bargaining chip.
READ MORE: Kiev set to comply with US demand to draft teenagers – Moscow
US President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly promised to achieve a negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict in one day after taking office but has since admitted it could take up to six months. His national security adviser, Mike Waltz, recently said that Kiev must acknowledge territorial “reality” and stressed that the issue is not “just about munitions, ammunition, or writing more checks” but about “seeing the front lines stabilize so that we can enter into some type of deal.”
“If Ukrainians have asked the whole world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy,” Waltz told ABC News on Sunday. “And they certainly have fought bravely, and they certainly have taken a very noble and tough stand. But we need to see those manpower shortages addressed.”
Former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also recently criticized Zelensky for trying to “preserve” the youths, instead of adopting a full-scale “mass conscription.”
READ MORE: No Western training can save Ukrainian conscripts from their own commanders
Ukraine’s mobilization drive continues to face challenges due to widespread draft evasion and desertions. According to the Ukrainian military, approximately 500,000 men are suspected of evading conscription since February 2022, despite toughened penalties and stricter enforcement measures. At the same time, nearly 96,000 criminal cases have been opened against servicemen who abandoned their positions, most of them in 2023, according to Bloomberg.
Moscow believes the conflict is a Western-led proxy war against Russia, which the West intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” Last month, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said that Ukraine has lost 1 million servicemembers to death and injury, with more than half of that number occurring in 2024 alone.
Zelensky’s decision to halt gas transit dictated by West – Slovak politicians.
The loss of Russian energy is only harming smaller bloc members, two of the country’s officials told RT.
The turning off of Russian gas transit by pipeline through Ukraine was a politically-motivated decision made by Vladimir Zelensky in order to please the West, two Slovak politicians have told RT.
A delegation led by Andrej Danko and Tibor Gaspar, deputy speakers of Slovakia’s National Council, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday. They are expected to meet lawmakers and government officials in the Russian capital to discuss trade and gas supplies in the wake of Ukraine’s denial of transit.
Kiev decided to terminate the transit of Russian natural gas through its territory to the EU on the last day of 2024, effectively cutting off the flow to some countries in the bloc, in particular Austria, Italy, and Slovakia. The move has sparked a row in Brussels, with the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico warning that he would veto EU-wide initiatives on assisting Ukraine, and would also take individual action against Kiev.
The issue is serious and “detrimental” not only to Slovakia but also to other EU member states, with Kiev itself losing a billion euros in transit fees, Gaspar stated.
READ MORE: EU country’s PM threatens Ukraine aid veto
“We see this as a purely political decision that will not harm Russia, but it will harm the economies of member states,” he argued.
Gaspar recalled that Fico on Monday sent an open letter to Zelensky inviting him to Slovakia for constructive discussions on the critical issue. “In response he received some words that were quite insulting,” Gaspar said, casting doubt that such manners were worthy of any country’s leader.
“We know very well that Zelensky is not a legitimate president,” Danko in turn pointed out, adding that the Ukrainian was simply following instructions from the West.
Zelensky claimed that by refusing to extend the gas contract with Russian energy giant Gazprom, Kiev was aiming to eliminate Moscow’s profits.
The major problem is that no one in the West really cares whether Slovakia will get any gas at all, according to Danko.
READ MORE: Zelensky sends terse reply to offer from EU state’s PM
“Brussels is duplicitous in many cases, and that’s why I don’t believe this will be resolved,” the official argued.
The situation with Slovakia’s energy becomes increasingly expensive is beneficial for Germany and France, he said, because Bratislava has to borrow money from German banks.
“We are already buying expensive energy today, but we will not be able to do this indefinitely,” Danko said.
Currently, a cubic meter of gas in the EU costs four times more than in the US, according to Gaspar, who described it as “an abnormal situation.”
Overall, the EU’s “pointless” sanctions against Russia have actually been hurting the bloc’s member states, according to the Slovak officials.
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How Ukraine Loses Its Chief Source of Coking Coal.
With Russian soldiers approaching the city of Pokrovsk in Donbass, Kiev was forced to shut down a key mine there that served as chief source of coking coal for the Ukrainian metallurgy bringing Kiev's steel industry to its knees.
The loss of the coking coal produced by the mine in question may result in Ukraine’s steel output dropping to as low as 2 million metric tons this year, as compared to the 7.6 million tons produced in 2024.
Steelmaking has long been one of Ukraine’s top industries, due to the fact that the country had ample deposits of natural resources such as iron and coal, not to mention mines and steel mills built during the Soviet era.
In August 2024, Ukraine’s extractive industries' association complained that about 40% of the country’s resource extraction facilities ceased operating, and that the Ukrainian metallurgy irreversibly lost at least 40% of its production capability.
In July 2024, Ukrainian steelmakers also complained that switching to importing electricity from abroad is having a detrimental effect on their industry.
In 2022, Ukrainian steelmaking output dropped by over 70% to only 6.3 million tons.
Since 2014, Ukraine has witnessed a serious blow to steel production and exports as Kiev gradually lost access to the required resources and production facilities such as, for example, Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
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USA
Did Anti-Russian Sanctions Become Biden's 'Poison Chalice' for Trump?
On January 14, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov highlighted the results of his country's diplomatic efforts during the past year at a press conference in Moscow.
The US is trying to muscle Russia out of the hydrocarbons market, Brussels-based analyst in international relations and Russian affairs Gilbert Doctorow tells Sputnik while commenting on Lavrov’s remarks about US efforts to take out the recently-hit gas pipeline TurkStream.
Having already succeeded at “largely replacing Russia as the energy supplier to Europe,” Doctorow notes, Washington now seeks to “achieve the full removal of Russian supplies from European markets.”
Professor Stevan Gajić of the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade even argues that the US aims to “make the European countries as dependent as possible from their LNG and oil, so that the United States controls the supply of energy resources for the EU, therefore weakening the Union,” Prof. Gajic suggestes.
The fresh batch of sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector, rolled out recently by the Biden administration, is meant to be a proverbial “poisoned chalice” for Trump, he explains.
“The sanctions on Russia are intended to make it impossible for Trump to enter into negotiations with Russia over ending the Ukraine war and revising the security architecture in Europe,” he explains.
Eurasian Partnership and the Rise of 'Macro Regions' Across the Globe
Russia's Eurasian partnership, which Lavrov said enables Russia to pave the way for more efficient avenues of economic exchanges, and the Eurasian integrations are “integrations of the future,” Gajic says.
According to Gajic, there are “macro regions” being formed around the world, with one example being Donald Trump’s declarations over Greenland, Canada and Panama.
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Even if Trump does not literally integrate these regions into the United States, the professor postulates, “there will be higher levels of integration in the American continent.”
“I think that the forming of macro regions, Pan-African integrations, pan-Eurasian integrations and Pan-American integration are the way that the world is going to at this at this moment - the grand regions are being consolidated," Gajic muses.
What Kind of Security Guarantees Could Kiev Hope for?
Russia’s military victory is going to be the only solution to the Ukrainian conflict, given Kiev’s eagerness to “conduct terrorist attacks on people” and on “critical infrastructure” both in Ukraine and abroad, Gajic says.
Doctorow too appears skeptical about the prospects of Lavrov “spending much mental energy devising security guaranties for Kiev.”
“Such guaranties can only work against Russia's national interests,” Doctorow says.
The two scholars made these remarks commenting on Lavrov’s recent press conference where the Russian foreign minister mentioned that Moscow is ready to start discussing security guarantees for Kiev in the conflict and Turkiye's offer of mediation to resolve it.
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VICTORY BELONGS TO RUSSIA: IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
Each day that passes makes a conclusive Russian victory in the Donbass and beyond more certain. As Russia bolsters her forces, and weaponry, those of Ukraine decrease. Russian forces gain ready access to rest and recuperation as troop numbers increase. The increasingly exhausted and demoralised Ukrainian troops have an ever decreasing prospect of such respite. This situation is likely to bring them to complete breakdown as Russia unleashes the firepower of the more modern and advanced weaponry that is arriving with the newly mobilised Russian troops.
The various Ukrainian offensives are now weak when confronted by the reinforced Russian lines. A few futile efforts achieve quite miserable results before fire reigns down on the Ukrainian troops and they are forced back to their starting positions.
And now, all this being said, we have arrived at the wet, and later, freezing conditions where these pathetic Ukrainian forces will be subject to myriad forms of abject misery with death and injury all around them while they lie sodden or frozen, abandoned to their fate by Kiev.
The pitiable young and old of Ukraine have been frogmarched to their deaths as cannon-fodder while the bestial elites of the collective West urge their "president" to add more to their number there at the gates of Hell and their doom. We must feel for the majority of them as they are not the Nazis we revile, in most part they are decent men, fathers, sons, brothers, husband and uncles, who no doubt saw through the coup of 2014 for what it was. But sadly, their fate seems sealed.
Nothing will stop Russia now. Every factor favours them. Victory will be Russia's. In Donbass and beyond and in due course across the world.
Victory belongs to Russia: It is now only a matter of time.
FIVE DAYS TO GO: THE TRUMP-PUTIN MEETING WILL BEGIN THE JOURNEY TO EVENTUAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN UKRAINE, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES.
