Rusia

Moscow grossly underestimated the economic costs of launching its war in Ukraine. Lulled by the limited sanctions that greeted its invasions of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and a false sense of security provided by its hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves, President Vladimir Putin appears to have believed that he could ride out any sanctions that a divided West could muster. He seems not to have understood the shock wave that a full invasion of a European state would produce in the West and the massive unity of the European Union’s economic response. He did not anticipate Germany’s about-face in its relations with Russia or the sudden attractiveness of NATO membership to Finland and Sweden. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be a catastrophic blunder by Putin, one that puts Russia and his regime in great peril.

Much has been said about Ukraine’s lethal set of western-donated anti-armor and anti-tank weapons that have been helping them take out Russian tanks left and right since the start of the war. However, there is another anti-tank weapon that the Ukrainian forces have used to bust Russian tanks up to smithereens, the German DM22 PARM2 mine.

The West Needs a Policy to Manage a War That Will Go On

With Russia’s war against Ukraine having passed the 100-day mark, calls for the conflict to be brought to an end are multiplying in the United States and Europe. Italy has put forward a detailed peace plan, French President Emmanuel Macron has emphasized the importance of giving Russia an off-ramp, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has suggested that Ukraine ought to consider ceding territory to Russia in exchange for peace.

The bottom line

While the transfer of US high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) and British multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) will help Ukraine, we assess that the amount of systems and ammunition planned for transfer in the first tranche will only have a minor impact in the fighting.