Jan 28, 2025
“The 1991 borders are unlikely to return” – The Times magazine outlines four scenarios for the end of the war in Ukraine.
Defeat. This is the worst-case scenario, involving russia continuing the war for an extended period while avoiding negotiations. The article notes that if Ukraine loses U.S. support, it could face military defeat. Millions of Ukrainian refugees would seek safety abroad, while thousands remaining in Ukraine would end up in russian prisons. NATO would lose its strategic positions, and Kremlin tanks could appear on Poland’s borders.
Bad peace. In this scenario, Ukraine, deprived of sufficient Western support, would be forced to make concessions from a position of weakness, resulting in an agreement that divides the country and installs a pro-russian government.
Ceasefire. The third scenario involves halting hostilities. If this becomes part of a transition to comprehensive peace, it could stabilize the region and preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty under international security guarantees. However, if it results in a mere “freeze,” russia could resume its offensive over time.
Peace settlement. The fourth scenario envisions Ukraine strengthening its position with U.S. support to negotiate from a place of strength. This would allow for an agreement ensuring the country’s economic viability, sovereignty, and security guarantees. However, the article notes that returning to the 1991 borders remains unlikely.
Source: The Times, TSN, UA News
Unfortunately the full article is paywalled :
https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/how-could-war-end-trump-news-k02l3tcwr
Comment from :
Andriy Diduh
These guys from Times,
must stop thinking instead of us,
—— what is the most realistic scenario to win?
The right people get right amount of money 💰 to make solid technology, this tech will plow through ruzzians like through fields with bugs 🐞 at the same time keeping our military safe 🤔 it’s more realistic scenario than it looks
Look 👀, our naval drones already made difference despite low cost and simplicity, the same is possible on land and air, partially we already have this drone tech pushed forward by specific people, for example “Madyar” (and we need to supercharge them like an engine with resources).
For this to happen we need:
- the most open borders with EU for logistics that we ever had, same with military deals from all allies, it must become easier.
- And our Gov. needs to make a few key steps to ease control over military tech development and import to Ukraine.
- And we need big investments in to Private Ukrainian companies, yes I know, but with the highest risk you may get high reward, for defense and civil market
What do you think 🤔 dear readers?
Nick Fedewicz
Another possible option would be for the US and the EU to provide great support for Ukraine, have them win back occupied territories and support the opposition forces in Belorus with a view to topple their autocrat and establish a new democracy. This would button hole Russia and make a bold statement for both China and North Korea.
Mary Jardine-Clarke
Every grain of Ukrainian sand will be restored to Ukraine. Indeed it has never left nor exchanged ownership and no one can do this on behalf of Ukraine . The Russian terrorist occupiers will be ejected.
Unwelcome, unhelpful, untrustworthy rhetoric by dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have no right nor authority whatsoever, to conduct so called peace talks or negotiations behalf of Ukraine.
……………
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico called Zelensky an enemy of Slovakia: “Our enemy is Zelensky. Zelensky caused the problems we are facing. I don’t like him because he is harming Slovakia.”
Let me reinterpret: The enemy of Slovakia is Fico. He caused the problems that Slovakia is facing. And Slovakians don’t like him because he is harming Slovakia.
………
A typical russian grandma is dissatisfied with the pace of genocide of the Ukrainian people.
She regrets that Stalin killed only adult Ukrainians, while he spared their children, and now these children have grown up and became “Bandera people.”
She hopes that Bandera people will be erased from existence. And by Bandera people she of course means all Ukrainians.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14octdBkdM4/?mibextid=wwXIfr
………….
My stance on American aid altogether with Валерій Пекар
Under the slogans of fighting grantoids and leftist initiatives, the patriots have really disgraced themselves with these claims that they are happy with stopping USAID aid.
Opponents of American aid did make me angry.
Oh well, I’m ready to accept (although no, not ready! ) that you are against helping farmers with mining, NGOs with housing, local communities with generators, hospital with equipment. Because you personally are fine: you’re not a farmer, you live in your own apartment and you’re not sick.
But what about bomb storage units in schools?
Are your kids in school?
Nothing is bothering?
Do they have armored hats?
It’s some mixture of extremely low intelligence, zero empathy, the ability to rejoice only because your neighbor’s cow died, and an unbridled desire to shoot yourself in the leg to make hateful bureaucrats worse.
Photo by Денис Піддубський .
…………….
The United States have suspended the United for Ukraine (U4U) program for Ukrainian refugees. This decision stems from Trump’s executive order “Protecting Our Borders,” aimed at curbing immigration.
………….
“Now russian cinema marches through international festivals, whitewashing the bloody stains of their crimes and receiving ovations. Culture is also a weapon, only more sophisticated. It strikes first at minds, then at conscience and will. It can be used to cover up any crimes, especially when the desire to ignore terror outweighs the desire to try to resist it.” – Ukrainian artist, Нікіта Тітов
……….
Russians started to install mesh security cages to protect their oil tanks and refineries, but as you can see from the photo, they are not very helpful against Ukrainian drones.
………..
Favikon has published a rating of the top 20 LinkedIn influencers of Ukraine in 2025.
Favikon works with the use of artificial intelligence – an assessment of influence of content creators is calculated using the Influence Score. Based on the received data, the platform forms ratings.
The Top 3 leaders of Ukraine:
- Victoria Repa, founder and CEO of BetterMe.
- Roman Sheremeta, professor of economics, founding rector of American University Kyiv.
- Mykhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
The ranking also includes the Minister of Economy of Ukraine, Yulia Svyridenko, the former heavyweight champion, Wladimir Klitschko, founders of well-known companies, industry experts, statesmen, educators, communicators and more.
P.S. Thank you for supporting my voice and standing with Ukraine!
Read the full article here:
https://lnkd.in/evX_A_NV
Also connect with me on other platforms:
- Facebook: https://lnkd.in/d6Y7HEMU
- Twitter: https://lnkd.in/eAEeqgT
- Bluesky: https://lnkd.in/eHHbR5Gd
- Instagram: https://lnkd.in/d-mMvVdF
- YouTube: https://lnkd.in/d7ys2sVn
“The 1991 borders are unlikely to return”
Many people have crystal balls, so it seems. I don’t give two cents for any predictions. I can make my own for free.
Personally I agree with everything said by commenter Mary Jardine-Clarke.
But the quote at the top is a realistic extrapolation of the direction of travel.
Elbridge Colby, Bryan Lanza, RFK Jr, DT Jr, VanZkov and of course Captain Cornflake have already surrendered the occupied territories to putler, so in order to recover what is rightfully theirs, Ukraine will need the $300 billion, plus the cooperation of all the other allies.
Trump would need to execute a 180° turn and there doesn’t seem much likelihood of that.
I think that the frozen assets will sooner or later find their way to Ukraine, especially if the orange administration decides to drop Ukraine or whatever else is too rich for the Europeans. For sure, they’ve been snoozing long enough … or their greed has been dragged out long enough.
Kursk, Voronezh and Rostov oblast may be captured by Ukraine these belonged there before and that will cut the russian supply lines
Full article:
How could the Russia-Ukraine war end? Four possible scenarios
As Ukraine’s fate hangs in the balance, can President Trump deliver peace or will the country face total defeat?
In matters of national survival, Ukraine awaits the decision of President Trump as a wounded gladiator awaits the turn of an emperor’s thumb: though not yet broken, the hard-fighting nation is certainly on its knees.
On the battlefield, the picture has never been so gloomy. Russian troops seized six times more Ukrainian territory in 2024 than they did in 2023. More than half the territory Ukraine captured in their surprise autumn Kursk incursion has since been ceded.
Multiple Russian offensives are ongoing along the 1,000-kilometre frontline, costing Ukraine more terrain daily in the eastern Donbas region. Towns most under threat of capture include the key Ukrainian logistics hub in Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian industry has received new and withering blows too. Outside Pokrovsk, the mighty Metinvest mine, the only facility in the country to produce the coking coal vital for Ukraine’s steel-making industry, is the scene of heavy fighting. It was closed down and evacuated by Ukrainian miners ten days ago, who first blew up one of the main shafts to prevent it being used by Russian troops to advance underground.
In addition to the six-figure casualty count of dead and wounded among Ukrainian troops, a further 51,000 Ukrainians, the majority soldiers, are now missing. Off the battlefield, more than 40,000 Ukrainian civilians are dead and wounded; over 3.5 million Ukrainians are displaced inside the country, and more than six million have fled abroad.
Defiance still exists.
“I still get up in the morning, exercise, wash, put on my make-up and jewellery, and go to work,” said a Ukrainian woman in a council office in Kherson last week, where Russian drones hunt and kill civilians.
“I do so, not because my life is in any way normal, but because I want to look good and keep going, living each day as my last.”
That same spirit of defiance once brought the country time, and Western support. Yet if it is to survive now, Ukraine needs much more than defiance. It needs Trump.
Breaking Vlad
Trump’s election victory was once feared by Ukrainians, who doubted that an American president who professed good rapport with Vladimir Putin could ever bring them joy.
Yet three years of spasmodic military support and an inarticulate strategy from President Biden, which brought the nation a sense of sliding survival and slow defeat, has allowed a desperate hope to flourish among Ukrainians that the new US president, a man so vocal in his intent to ending the war, might possibly finish the conflict in a favourable way.
Though Trump has been critical of both Putin and President Zelensky, Wednesday’s social media post by the US president, threatening sanctions against Russia, added to these hopes.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States,” Trump posted on the Truth Social platform.
Ignoring unlikely scenarios involving Putin’s sudden death or a magical Ukrainian counter-offensive, there are four realistic outcomes to the war. Ultimately, Putin believes that Russia can outlast Western commitment and defeat Ukraine. Trump’s ability to break that belief will decide which of these four possible outcomes becomes reality.
Scenario 1: Defeat
The first scenario is the worst. Should Russia choose to proceed with the war and shun negotiations then, if severed from US support, Ukraine may eventually be broken and militarily defeated.
Cognisant of his own wish to end the war fast, and recalling his criticism of Biden’s clumsy withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump will be wary of allowing this catastrophic outcome to unfold. If Ukraine is crushed, the implications for global security would be far worse than the fall-out of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Millions more Ukrainian refugees would pour out of the country; thousands of those who remained would be incarcerated in Russian penal colonies; and Nato — once proud of its enlargement into Finland and Sweden — would end up instead with Russia’s expansion westwards and Kremlin tanks abutting Poland.
Scenario 2: Bad peace
Almost as bad as the first possible outcome is the second in which, absent a negotiated deal or US support, Ukraine folds and is forced to sue from a position of weakness for a bad peace deal that sees the country partitioned and a quisling government established in Kyiv: a victory for Russia, and a clear defeat for Ukraine and its western allies. No Nobel prize for Trump here.
Scenario 3: Ceasefire
The third involves a ceasefire. If part of a transitory phase, leading to a final settlement, a peace deal and a real conclusion to the war, then it could lead to regional stability and the survival of Ukraine, ring-fenced by security and economic guarantees.
Without a final settlement, Trump’s inner circle is clearly aware that a ceasefire in itself is not enough. Standing alone, a halt in fighting would merely freeze the war along existing frontlines, allowing the fighting to start again at Russia’s convenience. Ukraine and its western allies are already conscious of two previous crippled ceasefire deals, Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, which failed to end the conflict in Donbas a decade ago, and laid the foundations for the full-scale invasion in 2022.
In an encouraging sign, Marco Rubio, the new US Secretary of State, acknowledged the necessity of going further than simply halting the fighting when interviewed by American broadcaster CBS on Tuesday.
“We want to do everything we can to help it end,” Rubio said. “We’re going to engage in making it end in a way that is sustainable, meaning we don’t just want the conflict to end and then restart in two, three or four years down the road.”
Scenario 4: Negotiated settlement
The fourth possible outcome, and the crucible of Ukrainian hope, would involve the US empowering Ukraine’s hand so that it could participate in peace talks from a position of strength, resulting in a deal ensuring Ukraine has a sovereign and economically viable future, with security guarantees protecting it from further Russian threat.
Given it is unlikely that Russian territorial gains at this stage of the conflict will be rolled back, “empowering Ukraine’s hand” translates as Trump heaping sanctions on Russia and committing to support Ukraine with weapons and money if Russia chooses either to shun peace negotiations or to participate in bad faith.
Ukraine will need to swallow a fistful of bitter pills if this settlement scenario is to become reality. Conquered territory will be ceded. The country will likely never, in this lifetime, see its borders of 1991 returned. It may, or may not, see the return of some of the territory lost to Russia since 2022.
Many Ukrainians already seem to accept some sort of territorial concession as a necessity to ending the conflict. Polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in October last year found that the share of Ukrainians prepared to accept territorial concessions to Russia in the interests of peace had increased to 32 per cent. If assured of American security and economic guarantees, that percentage would increase.
More than money, men and bullets
Given the vagaries of Europe’s ability to finance and arm Kyiv, among Ukraine’s allies Trump’s influence will be overarching in affecting which of these four scenarios most likely becomes reality.
However, neither money, nor munitions, nor sanctions will be enough to settle the conflict in Ukraine’s favour unless Ukraine can also redress its own flawed military and political decisions. Despite repeated warnings by his generals, Zelensky’s failure to grip the draft law and reduce the age of conscription has led to his forces being chronically undermanned across the eastern front.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military staff continues to bungle the army’s training and deployment system. The most recent scandal around military incompetence concerns the mass desertion of Ukrainian soldiers from the newly formed Ukrainian 155th “Anne of Kyiv” Mechanised Brigade.
Last year commanders dispersed the small number of the unit’s experienced fighters elsewhere before the brigade had even fully formed, meaning its ranks were then filled with conscripts. Part of the brigade was then sent to France for training, where dozens of Ukrainian soldiers promptly deserted. Back in Ukraine, hundreds more deserted before it was sent to the front near Pokrovsk, where the remaining conscript troops suffered heavy casualties. The ordeal resulted in the arrest of the brigade’s commander following an investigation.
The scandal has done little to improve the image of Ukrainian generals in the eyes of exhausted conscripted soldiers, nor to convince Western policymakers that Ukraine’s generals can be spoon fed competence.
As Trump may know, the outcome of war and peace is never decided solely by the arithmetic of money, men and bullets: the dynamic of chaos, the nature of leadership, the enemy’s vote and the whims of fortune also play their part.
Nevertheless, in Ukraine’s bleakest winter of war two certainties remain.
First, without America’s support Ukraine has no chance of ever reaching a position whereby it can negotiate a peace deal from a position of strength.
Second, the lasting definition of victory or defeat at war’s end will not lie with territorial concession and the loss of Donbas soil, but instead in whose sphere of alliance, the West’s or the Kremlin’s, Ukraine shall find itself after the last bullet is fired.
In these regards, at this critical moment of war, the turn of Trump’s thumb may decide not just win or loss for Ukraine, but its very survival too.
Thank you for that Larry.
I found it to be so bleak that it made my eyes well up. The realisation that after all the pain, death and horror that Ukrainians have suffered, that it may not be over for them for some while and even more heartbreak may lie ahead.
I may post it tomorrow.
Do you have a Times account?
Just NY Times.