Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia has been largely unsuccessful, with Ukrainian troops having only managed to advance 17 kilometres since the counteroffensive started in the summer. After more than twenty months of fighting, the Ukrainian army and public are becoming tired of the war, Western support is less enthusiastic, and even Ukraine’s military leaders admit the country has to prepare for a drawn-out war.
Ukrainian “gains so far have been small, as improved Russian defences proved effective, and any momentum created in the south and east looks to have run out of steam for now,” Reuters assessed the situation on the ground in an article published on Friday, November 3rd.
“Ukrainian forces have taken just a sliver of land since the summer; Russia still occupies nearly one-fifth of the country. In some areas, the Ukrainians are on the defensive as Russia pours munitions and men into the battle,” according to an analysis by CNN.
The assessment of the military situation comes after Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, wrote pessimistically about his country’s prospects. In an article for The Economist published on Wednesday, November 1st, he said the war is moving towards a new stage of “static and attritional fighting,” a phase that could allow Moscow to rebuild its military power. General Zaluzhni wrote:
Basic weapons, such as missiles and shells, remain essential. But Ukraine’s armed forces need key military capabilities and technologies to break out of this kind of war. The most important one is air power. Control of the skies is essential to large-scale ground operations. At the start of the war we had 120 warplanes. Of these, only one-third were usable.
The general also talked of the need to expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilisation, as Ukraine faces a shortage of soldiers.
The longer the war goes on, the more difficult it is to recruit soldiers. “Ukraine faces a dilemma because it doesn’t have enough battle-ready reservists. They have a problem with recruiting new soldiers,” military expert Markus Reisner told Austrian publication Exxpress. In August this year, The New York Times reported that, according to U.S. estimates, around 70,000 Ukrainian and 120,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the war. However, Russia has a much larger population and would be better able to handle a drawn-out conflict.
Pessimism is increasingly taking hold of Ukraine and its leaders. As Time magazine recently reported, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s closest aides have revealed the anger, division, and corruption that are weighing his administration down. One of Zelensky’s closest advisors said their leader “deludes himself” about the prospect of a victory. Another of his closest aides described how, despite his “messianic” belief in victory, “we’re not moving forward,” and some front-line commanders have started to refuse orders to advance.
Though a majority of Ukrainians still support Zelensky, opinion polls suggest that there is less enthusiasm for him and his government than before. A study this week by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology revealed that from May 2022 to October 2023, trust in the president decreased from 91% to 76%, trust in the government from 74% to 39%, while trust in the armed forces is still high, only decreasing from 98% to 94%.
Enthusiasm for funding the war is also falling in both the United States and the European Union. The war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East is shifting attention away from the eastern front and not helping Ukraine’s call for more weapons and ammunition.
Reacting to General Valery Zaluzhnyi’s words, U.S. Republicans made no secret of the fact that continuing the funding of Ukraine was not in their interest, as the U.S. elections are coming up next year and politicians have to be accountable to their own citizens, not those of Ukraine. “What exactly is our endgame strategy? What’s the plan here? I don’t think they have a plan,” Senator Josh Hawley said.
“This was always going to end with Russia controlling some Ukrainian territory and a negotiated settlement. I’ve been saying it for a year. It was obvious to anybody who paid attention to realities on the ground,” said Senator J.D. Vance.
To make matters worse for Ukraine, North Korea has likely supplied several types of missiles to Russia to support its war, according to South Korea’s military. Both Russia and North Korea dismissed the weapons shipment accusations as baseless. At the same time, the European Union is falling behind on plans to provide Ukraine with a million artillery shells by March, writes Bloomberg, potentially giving Russian forces an advantage in the supply of ammunition.
