Retired U.K. General Sir Richard Barrons told the BBC that Russia could defeat Ukraine in 2024, and that there is “a serious risk” of Ukraine losing.
The reason, Barron gave, was “because Ukraine may come to feel it can’t win.”
“And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?”
Barrons sounded the alarm that Ukrainian forces may not be able to withstand a key Russian offensive in the summer, as they are facing serious ammunition and manpower shortages.
“We are seeing Russia batter away at the front line, employing a five-to-one advantage in artillery, ammunition, and a surplus of people reinforced by the use of newish weapons,” Barrons declared.
On that note, Barrons stated that “the shape of the Russian offensive that’s going to come is pretty clear.”
Moreover, Barrons contended, “We expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines. And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them.”
Indeed, Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive in 2023 failed to gain any significant military ground from the Russians. According to the aforementioned BBC report, the Russians successfully undermined the Ukrainians’ advance towards the Sea of Avov, for instance.
The same BBC report cited Dr. Jack Watling, senior research fellow in land warfare at the Whitehall thinktank at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), as saying that “one of the challenges the Ukrainians have, is that the Russians can choose where they commit their forces.”
Elaborating, Watling admitted, “It’s a very long front line and the Ukrainians need to be able to defend all of it. The Ukrainian military will lose ground. The question is: how much and which population centers are going to be affected?”
Since 2023, Barrons has been warning that the Russia-Ukraine conflict would drag on for decades, in contrast to some other former Western military leaders who allege that Ukraine can still defeat Russia militarily.
Also, on April 12, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) declared in an op-ed published by The New York Times that “the Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war.”
“Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math,” Vance went on. “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide.”
The Ohio Republican added, “The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.”
On April 11, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to pass a bill to replenish the nation’s faltering troops, constraining the country’s longest-serving conscripts to remain on the front lines without an end date in sight. The Kyiv Post reported that the amendment passed by 227 votes to 21, with 97 abstentions.
Strikingly, the bill mandates all Ukrainian citizens overseas to key in their personal information in a recruitment database and requires that all citizens aged between 18 and 60 possess military registration documents. Individuals formerly regarded as unfit for military draft are to be re-assessed for possible conscription as well.
In response, Ukrainian State Border Guard Service officer Maxim Nesmaynov posted on Facebook that “someone is trying to destroy the country from inside” by depriving soldiers of the hope to “return home.”
Previously, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told the Ukrainian parliament to pass a contentious mobilization bill lowering the minimum conscription age from 27 to 25 to make up for battlefield losses.
Graham said that he hoped that those able to serve in the Ukrainian military would get enlisted. “I can’t believe [the conscription threshold] is at 27,” he added, as cited by The Washington Post. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”
“We need more people in the line,” he said.
Ukrainian officials have associated their country’s continued existence with the persistent inundation of Western cash and weapons.
On April 7, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “Ukraine will lose the war” if the U.S. Congress does not pass a $95 billion foreign aid bill, including $60 billion in military aid for the Kyiv regime.
On April 14, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told Rada TV that Kyiv would be more open to listening to American and other Western appeals to cease targeting Russian oil infrastructure if Kyiv’s Western backers would increase their military aid.
“You need to think in your own interests,” Kuleba told Rada TV, as cited by Russia Today. “If your partners are saying: ‘We are giving you seven Patriot batteries, but we have a request for you, please don’t do this and that’ — then there is something to talk about.”
Kuleba’s comments came after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin voiced worries that Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian refineries and oil storage facilities could spark a rise in global energy prices.
“Certainly, those attacks could have a knock-on effect in terms of the global energy situation,” Austin declared in remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Quite frankly, I think Ukraine is better served in going after tactical and operational targets that can directly influence the current fight.”
