Mounting evidence suggests that Russia ramped up its assaults on Ukraine leading up to the United States election on November 5, in a possible effort to strengthen isolationists supporting Donald Trump.
It also appears to be doubling down on that strategy ahead of Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
“November was the fifth straight month that Russian Forces have suffered an increase in monthly total losses,” said Britain’s Ministry of Defence, as Ukraine estimated that 45,680 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded during the month.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has estimated Russian losses for September at 38,130 and for October at 41,980.
Those climbing casualty figures are due to the fact that Russian ground assaults have steadily mounted despite the pain.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, estimated that Russian daily gains on Ukrainian turf averaged 22sq km (8.5 square miles) in October and 27sq km (10.4 square miles) in November.
“Russian forces have thus suffered an estimated 125,800 casualties during a period of intensified offensive operations in September, October, and November 2024 in exchange for 2,356 square kilometres of gains,” said the ISW.
These losses were well beyond what US officials believed Russia could sustain. They put its recruitment capacity at 25,000-30,000 a month.
Ukraine has recorded a similar crescendo in airborne attacks.
“From September to November 2024, the enemy used over 6,000 UAVs and missiles in air strikes on Ukraine,” said Victoria Vdovychenko, a programme director at the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank, and a fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics.
“This is three times the number used from June to August 2024 and four times the number used from September to November 2023,” she told Al Jazeera.
Before and after the election, Vdovychenko believes Russia also upped its information campaigns to manipulate US public opinion.
North Korean troops entered active combat in the Russian region of Kursk on the day of the election, showing that Russia had access to fresh manpower.
When US President Joe Biden reacted to Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s defeat by authorising US weapons to strike deep inside Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin fired the Oreshnik ballistic missile into Ukraine in apparent retaliation.
But Russian chief of staff Valery Gerasimov recently told his US counterpart the launch “had been planned long before the Biden administration agreed to allow Ukraine to use American ATACMS to strike deeper into Russia”, reported The New York Times, quoting US officials.
Putin was nonetheless able to create the impression that it was the US that was provoking Russia and prolonging the war.
These messages all played into the hands of the Trump campaign, his supporters admit.
“President Trump seeks peace and an end to ‘never-ending wars’ that benefit entrenched elites,” said Demetries Andrew Grimes, a former US naval officer, aviator and diplomat who supports Trump.
“The American people made it clear by electing Trump that they desire peace and an end to US funding for the war in Ukraine, reflecting growing concerns about prolonged involvement,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The topic of negotiations skyrocketed everywhere since the election, especially in the foreign media,” said Vdovychenko. “Yet Russia doesn’t show any sign that it’s ready to go into talks because they don’t suggest they are ready to give up on anything.”
Russia intensifies attacks
Russia now appears to be intensifying its attacks, doubling down on the tactics that helped Trump win.
Ukraine estimated Russian casualties at at least 11,000 for the first week of December, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tallied drones, missiles and glide bombs at more than 900 for that week.
Putin outlined his terms for talks in June.
“Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics and Kherson and [Zaporizhia] regions,” Putin told foreign ministry officials, naming the four regions his armies partly occupied by force.
“As soon as Kiyv declares that it is ready to make this decision … and also officially notifies that it abandons its plans to join NATO, our side will follow an order to cease fire and start negotiations,” Putin said.
Zelenskyy has since outlined a “victory plan” that includes providing additional weapons to Ukraine and offering it unconditional NATO membership immediately, guaranteeing its security.
In an interview with Sky News on November 30 he appeared to compromise, and seek NATO membership for free areas of Ukraine only.
“Zelenskyy was saying [there are ways of bringing this conflict to an immediate end] if there were immediate NATO membership for the free areas of Ukraine and deal with the occupied territories later,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“But, he says, ‘There’s nobody who’s actually suggested that to us’. He knows it’s a nonstarter because NATO doesn’t do things immediately or even swiftly, even without opposition from the US and Germany. So what Zelenskyy was doing, was showing up the lack of political will in NATO and the coalition of backers to actually arrive at a workable solution to the conflict.”
Most Ukrainians prefer to keep fighting, according to a poll released this week.
The New Europe Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, following its annual December survey of public opinion, said “64.1 percent of Ukrainians believe that negotiations with Russia are not worthwhile unless Ukraine receives real security guarantees from the West”. “The argument is that Russia will start the war again after a short pause,” it said.
Could Trump abandon Ukraine?
Some observers believe that Trump has already cost Ukraine the battlefield initiative it had following a 2023 counteroffensive.
Last autumn, he put pressure on Republican members of Congress to deny $60.4bn in military aid, and succeeded in delaying it by six months.
“If you look at the pattern of slow, incremental, steady Russian advances, it seems to begin after Ukrainians were compromised in their ability to defend themselves by the hold in aid eventually feeding through to an artillery famine on the front lines,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Ukraine was on the defensive in February this year as Russian forces outgunned it.
“[Trump’s administration] are looking for a swift pretence at a ceasefire rather than anything that is actually going to endure,” said Giles. “That’s why we’re likely to see suspensions or complete cancellations of aid fairly shortly after Trump comes to power,” he told Al Jazeera.
Days ago, Trump told NBC that Ukraine should “possibly” brace for cuts to US aid.
“Ukraine is absolutely dependent on the US, so if aid for one reason or another is reduced then that would have major implications. It is likely Ukraine will have to give further territory up,” said Michael Gjerstad, a land warfare research analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think tank.
“If aid, both logistically and intelligence support, is cut completely, then Ukraine is screwed and puts Putin in a massively improved position in negotiations,” he told Al Jazeera. “Even if there are countries in Europe that could step in, it would not be enough fill the gap that the US provides.”
Not everyone sees it this way.
“Only $11.5bn of the $60bn from the US was for procurement for Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a Kyiv-based associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.
He said he believed Ukraine has already performed miracles with one hand tied behind its back.
“There is a constant shortage of equipment, ammunition and this is the reason why the Russians have some progress,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s really a miracle they don’t have better results because they outnumber Ukrainians. They had originally 140,000 in 2022, about half a million in 2023 and now it’s about 800,000.”
Ukraine has about a million people in uniform, but that includes logistics and administration as well as combat troops.
A ‘willing’ European coalition promises to support Ukraine
If Trump did turn his back on Ukraine to press Zelenskyy into talks, Minna Alander, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs (FIIA) was optimistic Europe could fill the gap.
“The four Nordics – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – have given and pledged $35bn in total, excluding contributions to EU aid. That exceeds, eg, Germany’s current level of support and pledges to Ukraine,” she told Al Jazeera.
“A coalition of the willing, consisting of the Nordics, Baltics, Poland and UK, and possibly France, is also forming to make sure that European aid keeps flowing even if Germany and the US slow down. Denmark has been really leading with its $8.5bn commitment to Ukraine and Norway recently ramped up its long-term aid programme to $12bn.”
But in some areas, Ukraine would be left without replacements, said Hanna Olofsson, a spokesperson for SOFF, the Swedish union of defence contractors.
“In certain market segments – for example, Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAVs, tactical ballistic missiles, and long-range artillery rockets, there is currently no European solution available on the market, due to European governments’ underinvestment, prioritisation and industrial policy decisions over the previous decades,” she told Al Jazeera.
Whatever Europe does, many on the continent are mindful that even the Biden administration did not have a game plan.
“If only there were an allied strategy,” said Giles. “The US, it has become painfully clear, was never interested in a Ukrainian victory because that would also mean Russian defeat, and the current administration has been far more concerned about the consequences of Russian defeat than by the destruction of Ukraine.”
