The war in the Donbass region is turning in Russia’s favor and the U.S. is woefully lacking in the kind of diplomacy needed to get to a political resolution of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. These were two of the points made by retired Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Twitty, a former deputy commander of U.S. Army Europe, at a forum hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on May 31. “I think the war in the Donbass is starting to turn to the Russians’ favor, and when you take a look at—and I’m particularly talking about the eastern part of the Donbass—the Russians have transitioned from trying to pour all their combat power into the Donbass to obliterating every single town” using heavy artillery, he said, (no, they’re not trying to obliterate every town, just Ukrainian forces where they find them—ed.).
Russian and Ukrainian forces, he said, are matched about one to one except that the Russians have “a heck of a lot [more] combat power than the Ukrainians.” What this means is: “there’s no way that the Ukrainians will ever have enough combat power to kick the Russians out of Ukraine,” so the question is what does the end game look like?
