Ukraine between US and Russia/China
Ukraine: The Battlefield
In Ukraine, Russia continues to make territorial advances across most or all of the front lines, even in the face of Ukrainian counter-attacks, to the point that some analysts have wondered whether Russia’s next offensive - mooted for early May - has perhaps already begun.
The principal fighting in Kursk has now shrunk to Guyevo, where Russia continued to dig in its positions over the weekend, and now controls what Dima of the Military Summary Channel todays claims is in the order of 70% to 80% of the total. In Belgorod, where Ukraine recently attempted to compensate for its losses in Kursk with yet another foray into Russian territory, a Ukrainian presence is still notable in the closely-related settlements of Demidovka and Popovka.
In northern Kupyansk, Russia makes slow advances, with current fighting centering near Kindrashivka and Zapadne. Russia is close to cutting the Ukrainian major supply line from Kupyansk to Vovchansk (where Russia controls much of the north of the city). If successful, then Russia would be positioned to take control of a sizable area of northern Kharkiv. Further south, in the Kupyansk area, Russia has taken Katerinovka near Barova. South of Serhivka, Russian forces are moving west, bypassing Nadia, which is still held by Ukraine, and heading for Cherneshchyne. More and more the pressure is building on the Ukrainian held towns of Barova and Lyman.
Incredibly, the Russian effort to establish control over Chasiv Yar, to the west of Bakhmut, is still in progress a year later even if said to be advancing in the center of the city. The bulk of Toretsk remains in Russian control, despite Ukrainian counter-attacks. Russian advances around Pokrovsk, also subject to counter-attacks, are minute, day-by-day, yet look more substantial over time. Around the city’s southern perimeter, heading north and west, Russia claims to have secured Lysivka, the locality of Uspenivka and Solone, and southern Kotlyne, and Russian forces may be positioned to move into the city itself, with a view to dividing Pokrovsk from its close neighbor Myrohrad. West of Pokrovsk, Russian forces move towards Molodetsk, and to the south, Musavka, and further south yet towards Novoparitivka, pushing towards the border with Dnipro.
In south Donetsk Russian forces have taken Rozlyv. They have entered the village of Shevchenko, site of a lithium deposit, from the east and are taking more and more substantial territory west of Velyka Novosilka (which is itself west of Vugledar), with current fighting centered close to Novosilka.
More dramatically still, Russian forces west of Orikhiv (still under Ukrainian control) are attacking Ukrainian positions south of Kamianske, which lies only some thirty kilometers from the city of Zapporhizia.
Fantasies and Tariffs
Perhaps NATO chief Mark Rutte earns the prize for silliest statement this past weekend with the view that Europe has to keep up the fight for Ukraine because if Russia is allowed to win, then that will further encourage China.
The reality of potential US abandonment of NATO, in whole or in part, has increased in the wake of European reaction to US sanctions on Europe, which French President Macron says should counsel Europe to disinvest from the US and perhaps even, in the very, very long-distance future, make up with Russia.
Europe’s apparent unpreparedness for the impact of the sanctions is explained by its obsession with Ukraine. Yet beyond notes of skepticism about Project Ukraine from the leaders of Hungary, and Slovakia, in particular and even, at times (especially on the subject of putting NATO “peace-keepers” on the ground in Ukraine), Spain and Italy, few if any Europe’s leading politicians are willing to contemplate leaving the Ukrainian mess well alone so as to reimagine better futures.
Instead, they talk of raising hundreds of billions of dollars for the G7, for the EU or for Germany, money that they don’t have or that would subject them to crippling debt and economic dependence, or that, were they to actually spend it on Ukraine would tear their countries apart. Nonetheless, they boast they will spend this money on a European armaments industry that could barely muster significant new strength within ten years, starting from a position that US commander of United States European Command, Christopher Cavoli, describes as one in which Russia produces three times as many critical resources such as 155mm shells than Europe - and will continue to increase its capacity while Europe struggles to replensh depleted stocks and catch up, quite possibly without US help given that the US wants to concentrate on China.
In the meantime, the chances diminish that the US will actually be able to do anything about Chinese competition (on the pretext of wanting to “protect” Taiwan and China’s South China Sea islands to which US allies in the region lay claim). If one result of the tariffs is to reduce the price of oil, then China will benefit considerably (while Russia will be further incentivized to reduce the budget contribution of its taxes on oil revenues). China has again demonsrated the ease with which it can blockade Taiwan and possibly invade (its own) island.
China is unafraid of Trump tariffs: it has had experience dealing with this kind of threat since Trump 1, and knows how to turn a threat into an opportunity. If Trump tariffs have scared virtually the entire globe, then China and its fellow members of the BRICS have shown themselves very open to pro-development alliances beyond the collective West and beyond the dollar. China itself earns only 20% of its GDP from exports, and its exports to the US constitute only around 16% of its total.
China can open its gates to those countries whom the tariffs victimize, while redirecting its own exports more productively and stimulating domestic demand. But the impact of a stronger flow of cheap Chinese goods towards Europe may induce Europe to lower its shutters. Even Taiwan is under threat of US tariffs - the very island whose chips industry Trump lusts for and which he has tried to relocate to Texas, with dubious success. Even the future importance of chips is undermined by the development of AI in which China is so very much invested.
The constitutionality and legality of US tariffs will yet be contested, Trump’s device of a “national emergency” notwithstanding. Trump has avoided Congressional debate or, for that matter, debate of pretty much any kind, because, clearly, Congress does not want to have to stand up to Trump, does not really believe in democracy nor in itself. Given the shabiness of the the principle of reciprocity on which the tariffs are based, and the idiocy of the calculations of reciprocity, many analysts rightly speculate as to the “real” reasons they have been introduced.
Tariffs do provide, possibly, an interesting way in which the US can force other countries to help pay off its staggering and fast growing national debt; or they can provide the means by which Trump can get other countries to pay for the US and the collective West to fight World War Three. Another theory is that the tariffs aim to apply the lessons of the deindustrialization of Germany following Biden et al sabotage against Nord Stream. and US/European sanctions against cheap Russian oil and gas. Many German industries migrated to the US and set up shop there. Perhaps the Trump tariffs will encourage many more to follow suit and from many more countries. This strategy may run foul of inefficiencies in labor supply and support for foreign enterprises within the US and does not, in itself, help with Trump’s often-spoken goal of reindustrializing America.
Diverging Resolutions on Ukraine
Not surprisingly, Zelenskiy continues to baulk at signing Trump’s Ukraine Minerals Deal, since in effect it sells out Ukrainian sovereignty to the US. Perhaps the purpose of the deal is to make it so unreasonable that Ukraine cannot possibly sign it, and give the US the excute it wants to walk away from Ukraine and leave the issue to Europe. This might provide the US or, at least, Trump, with a pretext for continuing to improve relations with Russia, with Russia perhaps offering Trump access to minerals in eastern Ukraine that have as much profit potential as access to minerals in western Ukraine. The US walking away from Ukraine would allow Russia to continue with and soon to win the war in Ukraine on its own terms, allowing for whatever kinds of compromise and new understandings with Europe that Russia would deem dependable, if any.
A walking-away that also featured stronger bonds between Russia and the US would pose challenges to the solidity of Russian-Chinese relations. I dont believe these would be too severe given (1) that Russia has shown that it does not actually need the US, and can fend for itself very well regardless - as its survival of US sanctions has demonstrated; (2) the very long history of US inability to honor agreements and act in good faith is not soon to be forgotten by the rest of the world; (3) the strong ideological commitment of both Russia and China to a new, multipolar order that is not based on principles of great power division and imperialism.
Russian concern with this latter consideration will be piqued by the inevitable and widening gap in the thinking between the neocon approach to settling the Ukraine issue simply on the basis of getting a ceasefire now and arranging for negotiations later (a position that might be said to be represented by Waltz, Hegseth, Rubio, Kellogg) - a “frozen conflict” approach - and the newer “realist” approach (Trump, Vance, Gabbart, Witkoff) which is to coerce some measure of Ukrainian acquiesence to Russia’s basic demands, as outlined by Putin last year, and as soon as possible, allowing the US to get out and concentrate on China.
Neither approach is capable of satisfying Russia’s demand for a resolution that starts with the root causes of the conflict, nor with Russian consideration of the interests of China and the BRICS which demand an entire reconfiguration of the global rules-based order.