What the Year 2024 Can Bring Us

Forecasts and Prospects

Ivan Sichen

In our final journal issue of the “BINTEL” journal for 2023, you can find a forecast for a possible course of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the development of events in 2024. I believe that it is appropriate to return to this topic once again and take a closer look at the possible course of events in the near future. Unfortunately, the coming year will not bring us victory yet. But it can be fatal for Russia as an aggressor country. And although its existence is already flowing down like wax on a candle, it is still capable of creating tangible problems for us.

The Russian aggressor has long lost political and economic leverage over Ukraine. The Kremlin’s military efforts to conquer Ukraine are also fraying. The Russians cannot achieve anything at the front. That is why they resort to terrorist attacks in the form of massive missile and UAV strikes on civilian infrastructure and civilian population of our country. But, despite all its hopes, the Kremlin has not been able to intimidate Ukraine. We are rallying even more around the idea of confronting the attacker, and he is increasingly despairing of his aggressive aspirations.

Sometimes one can hear that forecasts are a thankless task. Because not all of them come true, and events sometimes develop in unpredictable directions. In recent years, the most illustrative of such examples and mistakes have been Russia’s plans to seize Ukraine in two weeks at most. The Kremlin proceeded from completely false forecasts, believing that “Ukrainians with flowers will welcome Russian troops”. Flowers were indeed brought, but only to those Russians who were lucky enough to be buried in cemeteries in the Russian Federation. At best…

Many of those mobilized to the front in the autumn of 2022 are no longer there. They do not get in touch, do not return home either on vacation or after demobilization. In total, more than 360 thousand Russian invaders have already been eliminated in Ukraine. According to British intelligence, there will be at least half a million of them this year. Let’s hope British analysts aren’t wrong.

However, Russia still seeks to defeat Ukraine, to get out of the impasse where it has led itself. At the same time, it again relies on its illusory ideas about events in the world, in Ukraine and at home. After all, such phantoms are always inherent in Moscow’s policy. But most people and social formations, regardless of what they are, try to learn from their own and others’ mistakes. As we can see, this, as always, does not apply to Russia. It goes “its own way”, stubbornly clinging to its principles, although they have nothing to do with reality. It is with them in mind, implausibly as it may seem, I will try to consider what we should expect.

So, what is Moscow counting on and striving for? And why is all this completely false and makes Russia’s hopes completely futile?

Firstly, Putin’s regime does not want to admit that Russia’s military and economic potentials are completely inferior to the corresponding capabilities of Ukraine and its partners, which is why it believes that “Russia’s victory is guaranteed”.

At first glance, Russia is indeed far ahead of Ukraine in all its potentials. But the entire civilized Western world is ready to support our state. And they are significantly more powerful than Russian ones. Not to mention that the funds that the United States and the EU promise to provide to Ukraine in 2024, namely $61 billion and €50 billion, are more than one and a half times higher than Russia’s official military budget, which is $72 billion. Although, in principle, like in the days of the USSR, its entire state budget is military. And again, it is ten times less than the $898 billion annual defense spending of the United States.

Let me remind you again that Russia’s defense industry has lost the capability of mass-producing weapons and military equipment. Maximum what is still manages to do is to modernize the T-72 tanks, as well as restore the T-54 and T-55, which are still stored in warehouses. According to official data, there should have been 14–16 thousand tanks of various types and modifications inherited from the Soviet Union. However, on satellite images taken last summer, there are no more than six thousand of them left. And even so — they are completely dismantled, which forces the Russians to assemble one “working” tank from three or four tanks disassembled for spare parts.

The media, citing fairly respected sources, report that Russia is still capable of mass-producing operational-tactical missiles. It has almost a thousand of them. All this “capability” was only enough for two strikes on Ukraine on December 29, 2023 and January 2, 2024. During each of them, almost a hundred missiles were used, that is, in total, this is 20 % of all available stockpiles. And Russia no longer has any more missiles, or they are stored for an emergency.

At this, Ukraine is receiving more and more modern Western weapons. And Russian air strikes on Ukraine will only intensify our partners in providing us with additional military assistance, including with advanced air defense systems.

Secondly, the Kremlin assures Russian society that “the West is getting tired of Ukraine” and it is allegedly changing its attitude to our country, calling on the Ukrainian authorities to move from military action to negotiations with Russia. Of course, on Russian terms.

In reality, Russia wants negotiations more than Ukraine. The war unleashed by Moscow, in fact, has reached a stalemate. For the whole of last year, the Russians managed to capture only one regional center, Bakhmut, in Donetsk region. The offensives of Russian troops in all other directions actually failed. With the total superiority of forces and means, they could not even eliminate the bridgehead of the Ukrainian Marines on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Any large-scale breakthroughs by the Russians are out of the question! Even after replacing those 300 thousand of Russian citizens who were mobilized in the autumn of 2022, another 430 thousand were recruited as “volunteers”. By the way, this is also a resource issue. Some believe that Russia has an unlimited number of people, and therefore soldiers. Why, then, is it forced to return wounded with severed or amputated limbs to military service from hospitals?

And in a few months, in March 2024, presidential election is planned in Russia. Therefore, V. Putin desperately needs at least some success in the war or its nominal cessation. In fact, it is not the West, but Russia itself that is tired of the war it has unleashed and is trying to do its best to end it in some acceptable way. Or, at least, suspend in order to restore its combat capability. In the meantime, the Kremlin is pleasing the Russian electorate with all sorts of dreams about plans to regain control over Kherson or to capture Kharkiv.

Thirdly, the Kremlin hopes that pro-Russian forces in the United States and the European Union will block the military and financial assistance to Ukraine. In the former case, Russia relies on the pro-Russian wing in the US Republican Party. In the latter — on Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán. He is trying to resolve economic problems of his country at the expense of Russia. All of these hopes are groundless.

The Republican and Democratic Parties of the United States have almost reached an agreement on providing Ukraine with the necessary financial resources. In early January 2024, a group of US senators visited the USA-Mexico border to find out how to improve its protection. It is the strengthening of the border regime with this neighboring country that is the main demand of the Republicans in exchange for their consent to positively resolve the Ukrainian issue. And at the same time — to provide military assistance to Israel and Taiwan. The Republicans may still refuse to help Ukraine, but not Israel, because it is taken care of by the majority of American bankers, who would rather refuse to finance the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s election campaign.

For the first time since World War II, US senators did not go on Christmas holidays but continue to work. And this is understandable, since the situation around Ukraine has become one of the biggest challenges for the United States of America after the victory over German Nazism. Now it has been replaced by Russian ruscism. Therefore, the United States has an adversary in the form of Russia, which Washington considers the main and greatest threat to American military security.

Let’s return to Europe. Despite the sabotage of Hungary, which finally sided with Russia, the European Union will also allocate the promised funds to Ukraine. A mechanism has already been identified to circumvent Hungary’s opposition. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, clearly defined and made public this mechanism. The consent of the authorities in Budapest is not required. The funds will be transferred to Ukraine directly by each conscious EU country. According to preliminary estimates, in the near future Ukraine can receive €20 billion out of the promised €50 billion.

But even without them, weapons are massively supplied to us, which nullifies all hopes of Russia that we will not have enough of them. Just one fact: Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain have purchased about a thousand missiles for Patriot air defense systems. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) has allocated $5.5 billion for these purposes. Japan also produces missiles for the Patriot air defense system. Currently, it replaces the stock of missiles by NATO countries provided to Ukraine to combat Russian air attacks.

However, the strategy of the United States and Europe is indeed somewhat changing. Instead of supplying us with their weapons, they are moving to investing in the development of the defense industry of Ukraine. This already allows us to mass-produce UAVs and increase the production of artillery shells. And soon the German company Rheinmetall is going to open a tank production plant in Ukraine.

Fourthly, Putin’s regime continues to believe it maintains the support of the majority of the Russian population. This was the case back in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and part of the Donbas. The “enthusiasm” of Russians has somewhat decreased as a result of the first stage of the economic crisis in the country in 2015–2016 due to Western sanctions. And in 2018–2019, it resulted in mass protests of the Russian population. At the same time, trust in the government fell to 30 percent.

In fact, this was one of the reasons that the Kremlin decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After Russia’s rapid seizure in February-March 2022 of the south and north of Ukraine and new territories in the Donbas, including Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, V. Putin’s rating began to grow again. At that time, the master of the Kremlin and the war against Ukraine were supported by 75 % of Russians. Of course, intoxicated by the Kremlin propaganda.

The retreat of Russian troops from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv, and then Kherson, which Russia proclaimed “its territory”, became a “cold shower” for them. To date, Putin’s war is supported by no more than 25 % of Russian citizens. And then, in “remote mode”, when people verbally support the war, but in fact try to avoid military service under any possible excuses.

Russian propaganda has also ceased to influence the society. At the end of 2023, the rating of the most popular propagandist in Russia, V. Solovyov, decreased one and a half times, and the main propaganda websites lost millions of visitors. People are massively abandoning Z-channels on Telegram. Most citizens no longer trust such publications as RIA Novosti, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia. They lost 9 to 20 million readers. An openly chauvinistic Russian source, Komsomolskaya Pravda, lost the most. While in December 2022 its website was visited by 107 million people, at the end of 2023 only 87 million visited it.

Fifthly, in its geopolitical delusions, the ruling elite of the Russian Federation relies on the alleged “steadfastness” of the country’s economy, which “cannot be destroyed by Western sanctions”. But earlier, Moscow was counting on Europe’s “critical dependence” on Russian energy carriers. However, the countries of the European Union, with the possible exception of Hungary, managed to give up Russian oil and gas, and switched to other energy sources. And Russia has lost most of the European energy market, which accounted for more than 75 % of its export revenues.

Almost all Western companies have left Russia, which has completely stopped Russian mechanical engineering. Russian industrialists reoriented their ties to China, which in some way made it possible to resolve the problem. However, Russia has become completely dependent on its neighbor, and in fact, one of its poorest provinces. If now the PRC refuses to cooperate with Russia, the Russian economy will completely stop.

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In general, the above-mentioned facts allow us to conclude that the forecasts of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (Ramstein Group) regarding the development of the situation around the Russian war against our country and its own proposals on how to defeat the enemy are completely correct.

For 2024, members of the Ramstein Group propose a strategic defensive operation by Ukrainian troops in order to finally undermine Russia’s military potential. According to last year’s experience, large-scale offensives by Ukrainian troops are most likely not expedient now.

In 2025, Russia will also lose its economic potential. In 2022–2023, after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy was dealt a devastating blow. And this was only when Western sanctions were just beginning to take effect. This year, the sanctions will come into full force, and next year they will finally destroy the Russian economy. Its fall will be at least 50 %, which Russian society will not be able to withstand.

And 2026 will be the year of our victory. It is then that the process of disintegration of the Russian Federation through internal destructive processes will begin. They will inevitably arise as a result of the aggravation of the socio-economic situation within the country.