Does the Operation Spiderweb change the trajectory of war for Ukraine?

Ian Fleming, the creator of fictional British Secret Service agent, James Bond, also known by code name 007, would have been proud of the plot the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) conceived and then successfully implemented without any hitch. Of course, I am referring to AFU’s complex top-secret mass attack operation, code-named Operation Spiderweb. This operation was so secretly plotted that even the US was kept in the dark, writes Vidya S. Sharma, Ph. D.

It is worth recalling that the US is the biggest provider of financial aid to Ukraine as well as the most important supplier of all kinds of weapon systems, ammunition, and real-time battlefield intelligence to the AFU battlefield intelligence to the AFU (please see graph above).

According to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, since 2022 the US. has contributed around $130 billion to Ukraine. Of this, $74 billion was in the form of military equipment.

The Operation Spiderweb., personally overseen by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, targeted four key airfields hundreds of kilometres away from the Ukraine-Russia border deep inside Russia. The operation involved remotely activating hundreds of mini-drones launched from the roofs of smuggled container trucks. This operation caused destruction of or damage to a number of bomber aircraft, capable of carrying nuclear arms.

In this article, besides examining the to what extent Operation Spiderweb may have dented the Russian capability to fight Ukraine, I wish to examine: (a) how the war is going from Ukrainian perspective, (b) how, after three years fighting, Ukrainians feel about the war, (c) is Operation Spiderweb (any such future operations) going to change the outcome of the war, and (d) what sort of settlement can Ukraine expect whenever the war ends.

Let us first discuss how the war is going for Ukraine in general and mood of Ukrainians towards the war so that the significance of Operation Spiderweb can be evaluated fully.

HOW THE WAR IS GOING FOR UKRAINE

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February 24 this year was the third anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia War.

Ever since the failed summer counteroffensive (launched by Ukraine in 2023), momentum has been only with one side: Russia.

Towards the end of 2024, Russia controlled around 20% of Ukrainian territory. Since then, Russia has driven out the AFU from its Kursk region (albeit with the help of North Korean troops). Russian troops are now advancing towards the northern city of Sumy, the capital of the Sumy district (Oblast). Russian troops wish to create a buffer in the Sumy region: it was through the Sumy region that the AFU launched its offensive to occupy a part of the Kursk region in Russia.

Fighting is continuing along the entire length of the Ukraine-Russia border (about 1000 km long). The Russian strategy seems to be to force the AFU to stretch itself too thin because Russia knows that the AFU is suffering from recruitment and desertion problems. In other words, its morale is low.

Svitlana Morenets, a Ukrainian journalist, in her recent article in The Spectator (UK) wrote, “Russia’s ranks are swelling with highly paid contractors and fresh North Korean reinforcements, while Ukraine’s forces are thinning fast. Desertions are adding to crippling manpower shortages. Officially, some 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted (almost half of them this year), but the unofficial number is much higher...The number of deserters has become so unmanageable that in August, Ukraine passed a law forgiving soldiers who went AWOL for the first time as long as they agreed to come back.” A convicted deserter in Ukraine can expect to spend 10-15 years in prison.

The Associated Press in late November last year reported, “Entire units have abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses.”

Chas Newkey-Burden of The Week (UK) reported on February 3, 2025, that “Up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are feared to have vanished from the ranks while training in France.”

Conscripting recruits to the AFU is even a more daunting problem. The AFU regularly falls short of its monthly recruitment target. On the other hand, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (initially founded by the CIA) reported that the Russian recruitment has exceeded its targets every month this year.

Konrad Muzyka, a Ukrainian military analyst who specialises in war games, open source intelligence, conflict reporting and is director of Poland-based Rochan Consulting, commented early this month: “The only thing keeping Ukrainian lines in the shape right now are drones, FPV drones (a type of drone that allows pilots to see exactly what the drone sees in real-time), and bomber drones; without them, it would be very bad.”

Mila Tanghe of Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, about the same time wrote, “Russian forces are advancing at their fastest pace this year, having opened a new front in Sumy, captured several villages near the border, and amassed an estimated 50,000 troops in the region in part to prevent Ukraine from redeploying units toward Donetsk.” Tanghe envisages it as a prelude to make a push towards Donbas (the collective name for eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk).

Konrad Muzyka concurs with Tanghe’s analysis. According to him, Russia’s “center of gravity remains in the Donbas, while operations near Sumy are intended to force Ukraine to stretch its already limited resources.”

Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (also known as Chatham House) is also of the view that this summer Russians will try to cement their control on Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk (towns in the Donbas region).

Last week, The Washington Post reported that “Russian forces are hammering cities in Ukraine’s east and pushing farther into Ukrainian territory in the course of a summer offensive to seize the momentum on the battlefield and carve out buffer zones to secure areas already under its control.”

As of last week, Russian troops were only 12 miles away from Sumy. And from the city of Kherson, they were only a mile away.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claims that its forces have moved into the southeastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, which hasn’t been the scene of much fighting to date. It is worth noting it is not one of the regions of Ukraine claimed by Russia. The Russian advance into Dnipropetrovsk was confirmed to me by some of my acquaintances who live in Dnepr (a city in Dnepropetrovsk).

UKRAINE UNDER PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY

Zelenskyy, a comedian by profession, became president of Ukraine in May 2019. He won the presidency not due to his vision for Ukraine or any outstanding virtues/qualifications/skills he displayed in his personal life or any remarkable record of public good. He won the election because the electorate was fed up with the established kleptocracy and corrupt political elite on both sides of the aisle.

President Zelenskyy is the poster boy of the West and is worshipped by Western media; he is portrayed as a true democrat fighting a brutal dictator who is bent on swallowing his country.

Unlike Vladimir Putin in Russia, Zelenskyy came to power in a fair and free elections. His enemies suddenly do not find themselves falling from a fifth-floor apartment window. Ukrainians voted for Zelenskyy because he was an outsider, and the electorate, especially young voters, believed him when he said that he would root out corruption and make Ukraine a country where no one was above the law.

But the reality of living under the Zelenskyy administration is very different.

The National Public Radio (NPR) is an independent, nonprofit public broadcasting Washington (D.C.)-based organisation, serving as a syndicator to a national network comprising more than 1,000 public radio stations in the US. Last year in July, NPR ran a feature describing how the Zelenskyy Administration has consolidated the country's television outlets and brought them under state control, suffocated most opposition voices, and dissolved rival political parties using the war with Russia as an excuse.

Zelenskyy had tried to choke the opposition by bringing charges against the opposition politicians. Many members of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, especially those belonging to the opposition parties, Holos and European Solidarity (of former president Petro Poroshenko), have publicly complained that they were denied permission by the authorities to attend an international events and conferences they had been invited to.

His administration and defence forces, especially those in charge of procurement, are riddled with corrupt officials/generals. Let me mention a few such instances.

Deutsche Welle Radio on August 17, 2023, reported Ukraine was dismissing all regional military recruitment heads after a major graft investigation. On January 28, 2024, George Wright of BBC broadcast news of major arms procurement corruption in Ukraine, and earlier this year on January 22, 2025, Laura Gozzi of BBC News reported that Ukraine's chief army psychiatrist had been arrested on a $1m corruption charge. On January 9, 2024, Elena Teslova of Ankara-based Anadolu Agency reported that Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov had uncovered massive corruption within the ranks of Ukraine's armed forces.

Zelenskyy rules using wartime powers under martial law that bypass parliament. Though he has suspended all non-state broadcast media yet a steady flow of stories of corruption that permeate his administration and armed forces continue to leak.

Independent online journalists have exposed how local medical officials are making millions of dollars by issuing fake medical certificates to draft dodgers, how lucrative government procurement contracts are being awarded to cronies of senior ministers and bureaucrats close to Zelenskyy.

In September 2023, Defence Minister, Oleksiy Reznikov was fired six months after his involvement in massive over-payments for food and equipment for the army was exposed.

In November, 2024, the head of an agency responsible for constructing bunkers for Ukrainian electricity substations resigned. He accused members of Zelenskyy’s government of blocking the release of funds until huge bribes were paid upfront.

Public finances in Ukraine have been in a very precarious state ever since the Orange Revolution (and later Maidan revolution) was orchestrated and financed by the US and other NATO members. It is not uncommon for police, teachers, doctors, nurses and other government officials to have their salaries in arrears by six months or more.

70 per cent of Ukrainians believe that the government is profiting from the war.

Last year in December, The Spectator (UK) reported that Zelenskyy’s cash-strapped government had stopped paying special benefits to millions of internally displaced people from the Russian-occupied east. Consequently, “thousands have voted with their feet and returned to their homes, most travelling via Moscow because of the closure of all land borders. Some 150,000 refugees have left, apparently preferring Russian rule to poverty and exile in Ukraine.”

Quoting Petr Andriushchenko, an adviser to the former mayor of Kyiv, The Spectator (UK) also reported that about a third of the population of Russian-occupied Mariupol has returned home. It stated that “Many Ukrainian regions are ‘unfriendly for internally displaced persons’, said Andriushchenko – especially as refugees from the east are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking, something that is increasingly not tolerated in many western parts of the country.”

The UN’s Global Data Institute’s Displacement Tracing Matrix also found, “As the displacement crisis becomes more protracted, relations between displaced and host communities are the primary sources of perceived social tension. Among IDPs who reported social tensions in their current location, discrimination or incidents against IDPs was the most commonly reported cause (43%). By contrast, 30 per cent those within the host community who reported tensions identified the inappropriate behaviour of IDPs as the cause.”

Forced conscription is also causing anger against Zelenskyy’s government. According to Owen Matthews of The Spectator (UK), “A severe shortage of manpower on the front lines has led Ukrainian military recruiters to take ever more violent measures to catch potential soldiers. Videos of these armed press-gangs appear daily on Ukrainian social media. Concerts and nightclubs are raided, with young men dragged kicking and screaming into vans.”

Zelenskyy’s popularity may not be as low as 4% as was suggested by Trump. What is certain is that, because of the reasons enumerated above, he is becoming increasingly unpopular.

A survey conducted by the Social Monitoring Centre in Kyiv in late November last year, found that only 16% of the respondents would vote for him if he stood again. The same figure for General Valerii Zaluzhniy (sacked by Zelenskyy in February, 2025) was 27%. Nearly 60% of the respondents would prefer if he did not stand at all.

THREE YEARS ON WHAT IS THE MOOD OF UKRAINIANS

Over the last three years, many surveys have been conducted to chart the mood of Ukrainians about the Ukraine-Russia War. Both by organisations within Ukraine and by entities based in the West. Some survey results are based on a minuscule sample.

On June 10, 2010, The Kyiv Independent published a survey conducted over the telephone by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The sample size was 2,004 adult residents. Not all the respondents answered all 4 questions. Nevertheless, it found that 48% of Ukrainians oppose the recognition of Russian control of the occupied Ukrainian territories to achieve peace, while 43% said they would be willing to cede land to reach a peace deal with Russia.

When asked whether Ukraine should give up territories to achieve peace - without specifying the nature of the Russian occupation — 52% said Ukraine should not take the step under "any circumstances. In comparison, 38% of respondents backed the compromise.

These were almost the same figures as KIIS found in its December 2024, when 51% were opposed to the concession, while 38% were open to it.

Another survey, published a few weeks earlier by The Kyiv Independent on May 8, 2025 and jointly conducted by the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based public policy think tank, and the Kyiv Security Forum found that 56.9% of respondents would not be willing to compromise on either territorial integrity.

However, to appreciate the above results and figure out how Ukrainians’ attitude towards war and ceding control of lost territory to Russia has changed, we need to put these figures in historical perspective.

Fortunately, such data is available to us through the UK-based branch of The Gallup World Poll. In a survey conducted in August and October 2024, it found that about 52% of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. While38% Ukrainians wanted to fight until victory.

This represents a fundamental shift, as at the beginning of the war in February 2022, nearly all Ukrainians were defiant and wanted to fight until victory. From my conversations with many young Ukrainians, I know that they expected the NATO forces to come to their rescue in a matter of days.

According to Gallup Poll,” Fatigue has intensified this year, with support for negotiated peace rising to 52%, the first time it has reached a majority.”

From day one, President Zelenskyy “victory plan” has required that Ukraine be given membership of NATO (so that Ukraine can invoke Article 5 of the treaty), and be supplied with Western long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia.

While NATO countries, especially hard-line members (eg, the three Balkan states, Poland, The UK, France, etc.) and the Biden Administration were eager to encourage Ukraine to fight with Russia, provide financial aid, latest weapon systems, munitions, training of Ukrainian defence personnel, real time intelligence, place economic sanctions against Russia, mount a diplomatic effort to isolate Russia by using Western controlled international institutions (eg, SWIFT, The International Court of Justice in the Hague), look after refugees, etc., yet they were not prepared to let Ukraine join NATO because it would have meant to thrust their own countries in war against Russia. For NATO members, it was a heaven-sent opportunity to fight Russia (it must be remembered that the NATO was created for the sole purpose of fighting the USSR/Russia) by putting their guns on the shoulders of Ukraine. To put it bluntly, NATO looked at Ukraine as a mercenary country or its proxy.

While the war has raged during the past three years yet Gallup Poll found that “support for continuing the war has withered in all regions in Ukraine, no matter how close to the front line they are. Support has dipped below 50% everywhere in 2024.”

Unfortunately, Russia is also aware of this fact. Russia knows both the momentum of war and time are on its side.

TRUMP WILL BE PROVEN RIGHT

As Figure 2 below shows, currently Unites States’ national defence budget is a little more than $900 billion. In comparison, during the Cold War years, the US annual defence budget was about $458 billion. In comparison, China’s defence budget is around $300 billion. And Russia spends on defence about one-third as much on defence as China does.

Figure 2: Countries with highest defence spending in 2023

Country Name	US$ (in Billion US$)
United States	916
China	296
Russia	109
India	86.6
Saudi Arabia	75.8
United Kingdom	74.9
Germany	66.8
Ukraine	64.8
France	61.3
Japan	50.2
South Korea	47.9
Italy	35.5
Australia	32.3
Poland	31.6
Israel	27.6

Source: Statista: Published by Lorenzo Macchi, May 30, 2025

During the Cold War, the Pentagon’s goal was to fight two wars simultaneously: one with the Warsaw Pact countries (= the USSR and its allies in Eastern Europe) with the help of its NATO allies and one elsewhere. The assumption was was the second enemy will less capable (eg, North Korea, Vietnam or if are looking for modern example then I would say Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, etc.). During the Cold War the US defence forces’ strength was about 75% more than what it is today.

According to the United States’ 2022 National Defence Strategy, today the Pentagon claims (aims) to be capable (jointly with its allies) to fight and defeat China or Russia (but not both simultaneously), defend homeland and fight non-state actors (President Bush Jr.’s ‘war on terror’).

Before Russian and China ‘hawks’, ‘neocons’ and ‘interventionists’ say that the US should spend far more on defence so that it can fight China and Russia simultaneously, may I remind them that unlike during the Cold War, the US’s structural fiscal deficit (ie, the amount of money the US must borrow to run its various programmes and meet existing commitments) for year 2024, according to the US Treasury, will be $1.83 trillion.

The US$ may be the world’s reserve currency but this privilege has its limits too. This was manifested by the developments in the bond market after the “Liberation Day” tariff announced by President Trump on April 2, 2025 and then again when Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025. For the foreseeable future, if no action is taken to repair the budget, this annual structural deficit will rise every year and the bond market, Euro, and Chinese Renminbi will continue to chip away at the status of US$ as a reserve currency.

These are the limitations within which Trump must formulate his strategy of containing China which may possibly involve a fight with China over Taiwan. This is why he wants to see (a) an end to the Ukraine-Russia War, (b) European NATO members and Australia to increase their defence spending. This is why he is pressuring US companies to shift their manufacturing facilities from China and friend-shore or home-shore them because such a move will reduce China’s annual growth rate.

If Trump can create a wedge between Russia and China by ending Russia’s isolation and by accommodating Russia’s legitimate security concerns, it will make his task of containing China a little bit easier.

TRUMP IS THE CONVENIENT WHIPPING BOY

President Trump has been the whipping boy of the foreign policy and security establishments in the US and most NATO countries. This should not come as A surprise to anyone who is even faintly aware of the size of the Ukraine lobby in the West. It is gigantic in size, well-funded and very vocal. It has countless friends in the media. It overwhelmingly comprises ‘experts’ who still think of Russia (and before that of the USSR) as the main threat to the US.

This is not to deny that the Russian worldview is different from that of the US or that there is no need to monitor Russia’s foreign ventures or the kinds of weapon systems it is developing.

The United States is a global superpower. Consequently, it needs to be alert about and divert its resources to geographical areas where it perceives the greatest threat is likely to emanate from.

The US cannot remain Eurocentric if other geographical areas pose a greater threat to its global superpower status.

China’s economy is more diverse and as advanced as that of the US. China can match the US in all three fields that matter when it comes to global dominance: economic might, projection of hard military power and technological capabilities/prowess (cyberwarfare, space research, artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, etc.). Further, unlike the US, it has seamlessly integrated the economies of many countries (both advanced and emerging middle class countries) into its economy.

What President Trump has said is what the candidate Trump said numerous times during the 2024 election campaign. The only offence Trump is guilty of is that he has injected some reality into the debate regarding the details of the settlement terms about the Ukraine-Russia War.

As I pointed out in my article published here on March 17, 2021, entitled, “I hate to admit it, but Trump is right about Ukraine”, even Biden never considered inviting Ukraine to join NATO though President Zelenskyy implored him almost every day since the current phase of war started on February 24, 2022.

European members of NATO do not like this shift in US policy under the Trump administration because (a) it puts a blowtorch on their inability to defend their borders and their security interests as they perceive them, and (b) it does not allow them to free-ride on the back of the US anymore.

They try put pressure on US policy makers by publicly stating that Trump’s commitment to NATO is doubtful.

According the Asia Development Bank, China plays an outsized role in the global economy. It accounts for 18% of global GDP and is still regarded as the world’s largest trading economy ahead of the US. Further, unlike the US, China has integrated the economies of many countries (both advanced and emerging middle class countries) into its economy. Many of US allies trade more with China than with the US.

Ambassador Mark Green, in a note recently pointed out (posted on the Wilson Center website) that in 2023, China was the top trading partner to more than 120 countries, ie, many more countries than the US.

It is not possible for most countries to decouple their economies from the Chinese economy without much serious disruption even in medium term. Even for the US.

The Chinese and US economies are also intertwined like hair woven into a chic braid. This is why President Trump soon after imposing 145% tariff on Chinese imports was forced to reduce them to a much lower amount within days.

Even when Trump reduced tariff to 55%, he had to coax China to come to the negotiating table and offer some more concessions, eg, allowing Chinese students to study in the US, ease export restrictions on some chip sales, etc.). If the response of Wall Street is a criterion, then the subsequent framework of agreement signed by US. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is tilted in favour of China.

The above are some of the challenges the US faces in its strategic competition with China.

Instead of advising Ukraine that to pursue a foreign policy based on hostility to Russia was not a sustainable option in the long run, the Biden Administration encouraged Ukraine to fight with Russia.

By doing so and then support Ukraine by supplying most modern weapon systems and munitions in the US arsenal, Biden worsened the security environment the US must operate in: his policy helped two of its most formidable adversaries, Russia and China, to develop very close ties that were not possible to imagine before.

Now it seems President Zelenskyy has fallen prey to his own propaganda that Russia wants to swallow his country.

Putin had indeed said so a few times. Yet he knows he is making an outlandish comment (similar to Trump wishing Canada to be part of the United States). He is nationalistic for sure. He never forgets to punish his enemies (as the ghost of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin will testify to it) but he is also a pragmatic politician (very much in Trump’s mode).

Let me give you a few reasons why it is least likely to happen. Ukraine shares borders with seven countries: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Russia, and Belarus. Out of these, the first four are NATO members. Russia is well aware of this fact.

Putin also knows that (a) it would not be difficult for NATO to train, fund, and supply arms and intelligence to any resistance movement(s) within Ukraine; and (b) in such a scenario, the human and financial cost of maintaining permanent control/occupation over Ukraine would be unsustainable. He knows both Russia and the US found the cost of maintaining a puppet regime in Afghanistan unsustainable.

Further, such a move will put Russia in permanent conflict with NATO, as it would be engaged in a low-level warfare with NATO; the latter fighting through its proxies in Ukraine. This, in turn, would not allow Russia to mend its fences with the US and other European countries so that it can achieve an end to Russia’s isolation and the removal of economic sanctions.

Russia would also be eager to mend its relations with the West and the US for the simple reason: it would not want a relationship with China where it is forever locked in as a junior partner. The present Sino-Russia partnership is a marriage of convenience. Historically, Russia and China have been foes or at best strategic competitors. Their relationship has been characterised by territorial disputes, conflict, suspicion and ideological clashes (eg, Mao and Stalin hated each other).

For the Trump Administration to create a fissure in the Sino-Russia relationship, it must try to end the Ukraine-Russia war in a way that recognises Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Russia will never accept being encircled by NATO on its western or European border. For Russia, the present war with Ukraine is existential. For Ukraine it has been a war its political elite was duped into fighting by Biden and NATO because they led Ukraine up the garden path for their own ulterior and historical reasons.

It is against this background that Trump’s assertions that NATO membership to Ukraine is not on the cards, and his willingness at the outset to recognise Crimea as part of Russia, should be interpreted.

SIGNIFICANCE OF OPERATION SPIDERWEB

The whole operation from its conception to execution was brilliant. It was imaginative and a great example of thinking outside the box.

The success of this operation, when the AFU was losing the fight on most fronts, would have boosted their morale.

Drones themselves are an old technology. What is new is their miniaturisation. By the 1980s, Israel and South Africa were using large and small drones in Lebanon and Angola, respectively.

The immediate benefit to Ukraine of the Operation Spiderweb is that Russia has been forced to house its aircraft fleet even further east from the Ukrainian border to Anadyr and Yelizovo airbases. Tu-95 will now need 23 hours for Ukraine missile missions.

The damage to the Russian strategic bomber fleet was not nearly as great as claimed by Ukraine. According to the NATO and Germany’s Major General Christian Freuding probably about 10% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet was damaged/destroyed.

According to Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff, “Overall evidence indicates that Operation Spiderweb has destroyed seven Tu-95MS bombers, or more than ten percent of the entire fleet, alongside two Tu-22M3 bombers, an An-12 cargo plane, and one or two A-50s that were most likely inactive and in storage.”

This would put the cost of total damage inflicted at around $2 billion. Now compare it to what it cost Ukraine: Operation Spiderweb used 117 mini-drones, each costing about $1000. So, you could not find a better example of what can be achieved with some help from human adaptability in asymmetric warfare. It would force countries to harden the shelters for their aircraft. Russia has already started doing that. Others, eg, the US, the UK, India, China, etc. will soon take similar steps.

Would it or such acts change the outcome of the war in any way? The answer has to be NO.

Though it is the biggest aid donor, yet It is noteworthy that the US was not kept in the loop. If it had been informed, the US would most likely would have vetoed the project. Why?

"I'm telling you, the risk levels are going way up - I mean, what happened this weekend,"Trump's envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News when interviewed about the Operation Spiderweb.

He went on to say, "People have to understand in the national security space: when you attack an opponent's part of their national survival system, which is their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don't know what the other side is going to do. You're not sure."

Independently of Gen Kellogg's comments, I had advised the same to my clients and friends. I also said that Ukraine should now be prepared for even more massive attacks on its infrastructure. Ukraine may have damaged about $2 billion of Russian hardware. Russia will now ensure it destroys at least $10 billion worth of Ukraine’s infrastructure. Since the Operation Spiderweb, we have seen Russia launching ever greater number of drones and missiles on Ukrainian infrastructure every night. It is also targeting Ukrainian cities that were relatively left unscathed until now.

Operation Spiderweb may have been a daredevil operation, but it was a mistake as was the AFU’s incursion into the Kursk region. Now they have not only been driven out but Russia seems to have decided to occupy the Sumy region, an oblast that was not Russia’s initial list.

At times, Ukraine has consciously tried to raise the risk level of the war in the vain hope that it may at last persuade the US and NATO members to fight along with them. This was one such effort.

Very early during the war, they damaged the Nord Stream pipeline and blamed Russia for it. When the US and NATO investigated the incident, they found “a senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream.”

WHEN AND HOW THE WAR MAY END

Nobody can predict when the war will end. But, all the available evidence points that whenever this war ends, the peace treaty signed will be more to the liking of Russia than of Ukraine.

It will have nothing to do with the fact that the new administration in Washington is not as enthusiastic in its support of Ukraine as the Biden Presidency was or that President Trump intends to cut military aid to Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy faces a huge predicament. Zelenskyy has stated many times, especially since President Trump’s re-election, that Ukraine doesn’t have the military might to win back territories it has lost to Russia.

Furthermore, he also knows that every day he is losing a little bit of Ukraine to Russia. Most of this territory was lost during the Biden years.

Yet under pressure from his European backers (for they will stop giving whatever little financial or military assistance they provide to Ukraine) he also insists that Ukraine will not give up territory to have a peace with Russia. He says, “This is our land.” His argument for not being to trade land for peace is that it will violate Ukraine’s constitution.

A country’s constitution changes as the political landscape in that country changes. The UK does not have a written constitution. Its institutions work on the basis of traditions and precedents. Until 1997, the UK was a unitary state. It resorts to calling referendum on big issues, eg, Scotland gained a devolved Scottish Parliament through a referendum in 1997. The UK held the Brexit referendum in 2016. Before the current Fifth Republic's constitution of 1958, France went through 13 other constitutions. The current German constitution (Grundgesetz) was adopted in 1949. Before this, there were at least two major constitutions: the Constitution of the German Empire (1871-1919) and the Weimar Constitution (1919-1933). India’s constitution, first enacted in 1950, has been amended 106 times.

My assessment is that Putin’s position is hardening. It is likely that whatever territory Russia gains in war, Putin will annex it and declare it Russian territory irrespective of the five oblasts that he presently claims.

It is the responsibility of a country’s political leader to pursue a foreign policy that he believes is in the best interests of his/her country. Zelenskyy - instead of worrying about what this or that European leader is asking him to do or what this or that faction within the army or in his party is telling him to do - needs to ask himself one simple question: given the present circumstances, is he pursuing a policy that is in the best interests of his country. Already 52% of the Ukrainians want some kind of peace settlement so that they and their children can get along with their lives. This number will increase with time and will restrict his freedom to manoeuvre.

In other words, time is not on President Zelensky’s side. The Trump Administration’s view is that the US must mend its ties with Russia and end Russia’s isolation so that a wedge between China and Russia can be created. This will make it a little easier for the US to put the brakes on China’s economic growth and contain it.

Trump has washed his hands of peace-making efforts between Ukraine and Russia, because he thinks Zelenskyy is intransigent. If Zelenskyy does not make a decision quickly himself, Trump might go ahead and to begin with recognise Crimea as Russian territory (as it was before Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine in 1954) and then, whether Zelenskyy likes it or not, all European countries will fall in line. The game will be over for Ukraine.

*Vidya S. Sharma advises clients on marketing, country risks, and technology-based joint ventures. He has contributed numerous articles for such prestigious newspapers as: The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne), The Australian Financial Review, The Economic Times (India), The Business Standard (India), EU Reporter (Brussels), East Asia Forum (Canberra), The Business Line (Chennai, India), The Hindustan Times (India), The Financial Express (India), The Daily Caller (US. He can be contacted at:  [email protected].

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