'Any peace deal with Russia would depend on Russian forces pulling back to their pre-invasion positions, Ukraine's president says.
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..Mr Zelensky said there could be no question of Russia holding on to territory it has conquered since it invaded Ukraine.
"To stop the war between Russia and Ukraine the step should be regaining the situation as of 23 February," he said in response to a question from the BBC, referring to the day before the war began.'
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Ukraine war: Russia must withdraw to pre-invasion position for a deal - Zelensky, May 7, 2022
'To win the war in Ukraine, Repass advocates that the US and its allies build up a Ukrainian strategic force amounting to five brigades of up to 40,000 soldiers capable of mounting offensive operations to force the Russians out of their country.
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REPASS: ..This will be a grinding, agonizing war if it lasts more than a year, and I think it's going to last at least two years. But we can't let it get into a stalemate. If it gets into a stalemate, Putin's going to claim success followed by a brutal occupation of the Ukrainian territory that he controls.''The former commander of the US Special Operations Command in Europe, retired US Army Maj. Gen. Mike Repass, says the international community has to greatly increase its support for Ukraine if the embattled nation is ever going to be able to drive the Russians out.
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To win the war in Ukraine, Repass advocates that the US and its allies build up a Ukrainian strategic force amounting to five brigades of up to 40,000 soldiers capable of mounting offensive operations to force the Russians out of their country.
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REPASS: ..So, what are we, the West, collectively doing to ensure that two out of those three possibilities don't happen? Everybody is thinking about the immediate fight right now, which means we're running supplies to the Ukrainians. The problem is that the Ukraine's army needs additional capabilities to be able to drive Russia out of Ukraine.
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I think there's a growing realization among NATO countries and the international community that we're going to have to do something besides resource Ukraine's current fight. So, there are four things that the US and its allies need to do. First, we need to weaken Russia by strengthening Ukrainian capabilities. Second, we need to further deter Russia by increasing our own and NATO's capabilities. Third, is degrading Russia's armed forces and capabilities. Finally, we need to ensure Russia's defeat in Ukraine, and that is done by building a strategic and operational reserve force for Ukraine that can do offensive operations to kick the Russians out of Ukraine and secure its borders.
You need to have the US, French, Poles, UK and the Germans each build a brigade's worth of Ukrainian combat power. Those nations have significant military capacity and could generate forces by equipping Ukrainian units and then training them in their own nations. So, that would be five brigades, in five operational sectors. And you would need probably six to eight months to implement that. These five brigades would have Western equipment fighting in Western ways, an integrated air-land battle approach where you have all the means available to you, to include NATO-interoperable tanks, close-air support and air defense.
..There are up to 8,000 soldiers or so in a brigade, so that's up to 40,000 people in five brigades. I believe the Ukrainians are capable of finding that many soldiers given the current national emergency.
Historically, when a Western military has come up against an army that has been supplied by the Russians, the Russian-backed army has been totally annihilated by an inferior number of forces, as was the case, for instance, during the first Gulf War when the US military destroyed much of Saddam Hussein's army in Kuwait. We know that the Western armaments have a significant qualitative edge over Russian equipment, so numbers and force ratios are skewed when it is Western military equipment up against Russian-made equipment.
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Putin's officials have also said that the Baltic have no historical basis and they're illegitimate states -- the same thing they said about Ukraine before the war. The three Baltic states, and Poland, firmly believe that after Ukraine that they're next on Russia's hit list. They see Russia as an existential threat. And there's no evidence that Putin is willing to stop at Ukraine.
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BERGEN: Starting a war, that's often the easy part. Wars have their own logic. Unfortunately, this war might go on for a year or even two years.
REPASS: I fear that you're right. This will be a grinding, agonizing war if it lasts more than a year, and I think it's going to last at least two years. But we can't let it get into a stalemate. If it gets into a stalemate, Putin's going to claim success followed by a brutal occupation of the Ukrainian territory that he controls.'
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Retired US major general: What it will take for the Ukrainians to win, May 5, 2022
Context(Russia's war of brutality) - NATO countries '..put industry on a war-time footing..' (Mobilizing Industry)Echoes of Afghanistan in Russian Soldiers’ Poor Discipline in Ukraine, April 1, 2022
Love Bombing Moscow, February 25, 2022
U.S., allies plan for long-term isolation of Russia, April 17, 2022
China’s Echoes of Russia’s Alternate Reality Intensify Around the World, April 11, 2022
Top general warns about China's military. Here's the context, April 6, 2022
Russia's genocide handbook, April 8, 2022
Chernihiv: Are these Russia's weapons of war?, April 10, 2022
Exclusive: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Chief Warns of “Real Hell” for Russians, March 15, 2022
Ukrainians overwhelmingly support their army and Zelenskyy, expect to defeat Russia, but want more help from West, five new polls show, March 15, 2022
A Ukrainian victory would usher in a new geopolitical transformation, March 16, 2022
Ukraine: What does neutrality mean, and could it lead to peace? March 15, 2022
Putin: War by All and Other Means, March 28, 2022
Revealed: Russia's worst war crime in Chechnya, March 5, 2000