Russia Matters, 12/6/24

5 Things to Know

1. Advisers to Donald Trump are floating proposals to end the Ukraine war that would cede large parts of the country to Russia for the foreseeable future and take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, according to a Reuters analysis of statements and interviews with several people close to the U.S. president-elect, including his incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine must find diplomatic solutions to regaining occupied territories and suggested he may be open to negotiations by sending his chief of staff Andrei Yermak to Washington to meet with members of Trump’s team such as JD Vance, Mike Waltz and a representative for Kellogg. While Yermak has so far made no public comments on the outcome of these meetings, Ukraine’s foreign minister repeated his government’s stance that Kyiv would reject any security guarantees other than NATO membership. Just as Ukraine’s territorial losses and manpower shortages may make Zelenskyy more amenable to negotiating a deal with Putin, the latter’s knowledge of these losses and shortages may make him less willing to pursue such a deal for as long as his forces keep capturing land in Ukraine and retaking land in Russia’s Kursk region. It is also difficult to imagine how any mediator of talks between Ukraine and Russia can accommodate Ukraine’s demands for NATO membership given the persistent opposition of some of the alliance’s members, such as Hungary.*
2. In the past month (Nov. 1–Dec. 4), the Russian forces made a net gain of 354 square miles in Ukraine, which is about the size of the city of Dallas, Texas. This gain includes 95 square miles Russia gained in the past week, which is slightly larger than the size of Boston, Mass., according RM staff’s Dec. 4, 2024, estimate based on data provided for that period by the Institute for the Study of War. ISW itself has calculated that Russia captured 1,042 square miles (2,700 square kilometers) in 2024, about the size of Rhode Island, compared with just 180 square miles (465 square kilometers) last year, according to FT. In the latest developments reported on Dec. 6, the Russian military claimed to have captured the Donetsk region settlements of Sukhi Yaly and Pustynka, with the latter about 30 kilometers away from the embattled supply hub of Pokrovsk and about 35 kilometers away from the industrial town of Kurakhove. Ukrainian military analyst DeepState said Russian troops were less than 7 kilometers from the outskirts of Pokrovsk, which is a major logistics base and transport hub for Ukraine’s armed forces, where multiple roads and rail lines intersect. Given how precarious the situation has become in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy announced that he was replacing the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, appointing Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapaty to succeed Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavliuk, accordiung to NYT.
3. The U.S. has pressed Ukraine to lower its military recruitment age to 18 to address a severe shortage of manpower that has weakened its position on the battlefield and led to the fastest Russian gains in two years, according to FT. In addition to casualties, the personnel strength of the Ukrainian armed forces has been diminished by desertions. More Ukrainian soldiers have deserted in the first 10 months of this year than in the previous two years of the war, according to FT. Since 2022, Ukraine has opened nearly 96,000 criminal cases against servicemen who abandoned their positions in what represents a sixfold increase over the past two years, and most of the cases were opened this year, according to Bloomberg.
4. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, have spoken by phone on how to manage escalation concerns between the two countries, defense and military officials told NYT. The rare phone call took place on Nov. 27, just six days after Russia launched a new nuclear-capable MRBM, “Oreshnik,” at Ukraine and nine days before Vladimir Putin said he would heed Belarus’ request to deploy this missile on Belarus’s territory. The past week has seen Putin continue to talk up the Oreshnik, describing its impact as being “comparable in power to that of a nuclear weapon.” In remarks made on Nov. 28, Putin also said Russia will use any means it has at its disposal to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry is yet to confirm Gerasimov’s conversation with Brown. Previously, the Kremlin denied reports in the U.S. media that Putin spoke to Donald Trump upon the latter’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.
5. Three-quarters of Americans (76%) worry Russia might use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, and 70% are concerned about Russia launching a thermonuclear attack against the U.S., up 10 points since 2021, according to the 2024 Reagan National Defense Survey, conducted in November 2024. In contrast, only 39% of Russians think Russia would be definitely or probably justified in using nuclear weapons in this war, while 45% do not find such actions justifiable, according to the Levada Center’s November poll. The gap between nuclear hawks and doves in Russia was wider than in the previous poll: in April 2023, some 29% of Russians said they’d justify the use of nukes in Ukraine, while 56% held the opposite view.