Russian War Casualties Complicate Putin’s Battlefield Calculus
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Russia’s rising battlefield casualties may hurt Vladimir Putin’s ability to ramp up his assault on Ukraine in coming months, Western officials tell us.
Moscow’s losses have exceeded its recruitment of between 30,000 and 35,000 military personnel a month, the officials said. That’s likely to factor into any decision by Putin on whether to mount a surge in the spring or summer months.
Putin’s tricky calculus — a general mobilization might prove politically costly — comes as the war enters its fifth year, with little progress on the ceasefire US President Donald Trump is trying to broker. Putin has been unwilling to budge on his demands for territory, deemed unacceptable to Ukraine.
Kyiv’s European allies, meanwhile, continue to rally to its cause. The European Union’s single market would get a “significant boost” should Ukraine join the bloc, Dutch Central Bank governor Olaf Sleijpen said in a speech.
On April 15, the EU will unveil a proposal to ban remaining imports of Russian oil, according to a document we’ve seen. It already agreed on a similar prohibition on Russian gas from 2027. The oil ban will be presented just after elections in Hungary, one of the few EU countries that still buys fuel from the Kremlin. —
The US ambassador in Paris, Charles Kushner, was cut off from contact with French government officials after failing to show up for a summons over State Department comments about the killing of a far-right activist in Lyon. It’s the latest example of US diplomats getting into hot water in Europe and the Middle East as the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy sparks fresh tensions with allies and adversaries alike.