A BROADER WAR? As a three-day truce brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia wobbled, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned late Tuesday that the conflict was “lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.” Get out while you can: With no end in sight, massive queues were building on Sudan’s borders with Egypt and Chad and the U.N. refugee agency predicted at least hundreds of thousands would flee the country, the Guardian reported. Evacuation winding down? The U.S. and European countries continued to airlift their citizens as well as other nationals out of Khartoum, but with fighting flaring again, it’s not clear how long the operations can be sustained. Germany, which evacuated hundreds of its own and other nationals in recent days, said Tuesday evening it was suspending flights. However, according to a statement from the French government Tuesday, “evacuation operations from Khartoum are continuing. Four new rotations were carried out by means of the Air and Space Force, between Khartoum and Djibouti on the night of 24 to 25 April.” UKRAINE WAR DEFINING ‘AS MUCH AS IT TAKES’: As the Ukraine war grinds on into its second year of intense battle, the oft-heard Western pledge to undertake whatever it takes to help Kyiv deserves more precision, Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army in Europe, told POLITICO’s Joshua Posaner in an interview we will air next week on our EU Confidential podcast. “We have to decide if we want Ukraine to win,” Hodges said. “The U.S., U.K., Germany, and France have not said, ‘we want Ukraine to win’; They haven't laid out a clear strategic objective. We say, ‘we're with you for as long as it takes.’ That's not an objective. Or we want Russia to lose. What does that mean?” ‘V’ FOR VICTORY: Only when the West resolves to help Ukraine achieve victory — and not just to defend itself — will the paralysis that has seized the West’s approach to the conflict lift, Hodges argues. “When we do that, all the excuses — ‘oh, we don't have enough of these; it takes too long to do that’ — fall away and we make sure that they win.” European vacation: Europe has proved to be a particular laggard when it comes to matching rhetoric with action. While the U.S. has so far delivered more than €43 billion in military aid to the country, the German total is a fraction of that at €3.6 billion. France’s contribution has been even more modest at just €653 million. Critics say the widening transatlantic gap is all the more troubling given that it’s Europe’s security that’s at stake. THE BATTLE FOR CRIMEA: Many in the West believe, falsely in Hodges view, that Ukraine might be willing to just let Russia keep Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. The Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet is based there and Crimea has served as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and “the launching pad for everything bad the Russians have done in the Black Sea region,” Hodges said. That has included blocking Ukrainian ports and ships carrying grain and other goods. That’s why it’s imperative Ukraine win it back. “The Ukrainian general staff recognizes that they will never be safe or secure as long as Russia occupies Crimea. And they also know that their economy will never recover.” Bottom line: “Ukraine cannot recover as long as Russia occupies Crimea.”
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