Our neighbor will enter a vicious circle next year, for Ukraine 2024 will be a much more fraught year than 2023.
Unlike my three colleagues, I believe that the situation in the East will be far from unchanged in 2024, security policy expert Robert C. Castel writes on social media.
If the black swan scenarios are put aside and only linear projections are taken into account, then 2024 will be a much more disaster-laden year for Ukraine than 2023.
Why?
Because besides intentions, there is another thing called ability.
If the West's intentions to support Ukraine remain rock solid, its capabilities will be significantly reduced.
About to a third of the 2023 level.
Give and take 5 percent, north or south of that one-third.
The ever-escalating Middle East crisis with its seven battlefields is absorbing the powers like lightning bolts.
The air and sea bridge built towards Israel initially transported mainly air-launched precision instruments and Tamir interceptor missiles. These are increasingly being replaced by the tools of a land mass war. Among other things, the artillery ammunition of which Ukraine is chronically undernourished.
In 2024, the military production capacity of the West will be burdened with a burden of the same magnitude as the war in the Middle East. Occasionally from their dying dust.
Intention is free and immediate.
In many cases, the development and rebuilding of capabilities is a decade and a half project.
A dramatic reduction in the ability of Western aid will generate further Ukrainian failures, which in turn will undermine the West's intention to increase aid in the future.
This vicious circle will be Ukraine's cross in 2024, and if Russia does nothing else than what it has done so far, it will still enjoy a significant advantage.
Featured image: MTI/EPA/Yuri Kochetkov
