A year ago, a resolute President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled direct from the battlefield of Bakhmut to address the US Congress and meet with President Joe Biden. He was feted as a hero; Ukraine\u2019s determination to resist Russian aggression met with strong bipartisan backing in Washington. <\/p>\n
One year on, the outlook looks much grimmer. A long-anticipated Ukrainian offensive in the south has made scant progress. Russia appears to have weathered international sanctions, for now, and has converted its economy into a war machine. <\/p>\n
The Russian way of war, absorbing hideous losses of men and materiel but throwing yet more into the fight, has blunted the Ukrainian military\u2019s tactical and technological edge, as its top general admitted in a candid essay last month. <\/p>\n
The mood in Moscow seems grimly determined: the goals of the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d will be achieved, and the fighting will continue until they are. <\/p>\n
As the long frontline becomes ever more calcified, the Kremlin senses greater skepticism among Kyiv\u2019s Western backers that Ukraine can recover the 17% <\/strong>of its territory still occupied by Russian forces. <\/p>\n Russian\u00a0President Vladimir Putin is relishing the much more partisan atmosphere in Washington, where many in the Republican Party are questioning the purpose of sending Ukraine another $61 billion worth of aid as requested by the Biden administration, assessing that it will achieve little on the battlefield. <\/p>\n At his first year-end news conference since the conflict began, Putin scoffed: \u201cUkraine produces almost nothing today, everything is coming from the West, but the free stuff is going to run out some day, and it seems it already is.\u201d <\/p>\n At the same time, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked a $55 \ufeffbillion EU package of financial aid for Ukraine, prompting one German politician to say that it was like having Putin himself sitting at the table. <\/p>\n That jeopardizes government spending on everything from salaries to hospitals. <\/p>\n Zelensky, who by his own recent admission is tired, has an ever-harder job as Ukraine\u2019s chief salesman, with events in the Middle East diverting attention from Ukraine as the number-one international crisis. <\/p>\n On the first anniversary of the invasion, he predicted that \u201c2023 will be the year of our victory!\u201d He\u2019s unlikely to make the same optimistic forecast for the coming year. <\/p>\n Russia is not without its own vulnerabilities, but they are more long-term. The conflict has exacerbated its demographic crisis through emigration and battlefield losses. Nearly 750,000 people left Russia in 2022; analysts expect an even higher number will have voted with their feet this year. <\/p>\n Labor shortages are stoking rising wages and therefore inflation. Evading sanctions and maintaining industrial production comes at a price, with much of that production now devoted to replacing the stunning battlefield losses and the budget deficit exploding accordingly. <\/p>\n The long-term prognosis for the Russian economy is grim \u2013 and that may be Putin\u2019s most fundamental legacy. <\/p>\n But as the economist John Maynard Keynes once said, \u201cIn the long run we are all dead.\u201d In the short-term Putin appears unassailable. Reelection in March is a formality (the Kremlin has already acknowledged as much.) Contrast that with the US, where a febrile year of campaigning might end with Donald Trump preparing for his second term. That is Kyiv\u2019s nightmare and Moscow\u2019s dream. <\/p>\n The deeply partisan mood in Congress has scuppered the Biden\u2019s administration\u2019s request for further aid for Kyiv. Currently allocated funds for military equipment are nearly drained. One Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, said starkly: \u201cWe are about to abandon Ukraine.\u201d <\/p>\n The mantra in Western capitals on supporting Ukraine has been \u201cas long as it takes.\u201d But standing next to Zelensky this month, Biden said the US would support Ukraine \u201cas long as we can.\u201d <\/p>\n While the global metrics for Ukraine deteriorate, so the frontlines offer little cheer. <\/p>\n The much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June was meant to display the superiority of NATO\u2019s strategy of combined arms warfare, drilled into newly-minted Ukrainian brigades who were trained in muddy fields in Germany. But it was alien to Ukrainian military culture and was not matched by superiority in the skies. <\/p>\n What should have been a dash south to the Black Sea became a quagmire in dense minefields, with Western armor picked off from the air by Russian drones and aviation. <\/p>\n Ukrainian units took at most 200 square kilometers of territory over six months. The goals of reaching the coastline, Crimea and splitting Russian forces in the south remained a distant dream. <\/p>\n With the frontlines frozen, Kyiv\u2019s intelligence agencies have turned to more spectacular attacks: sinking a Russian landing ship in Crimea this week and even sabotaging railway lines as far as the Russian Far East. Success in the Black Sea has allowed for relatively safe passage for merchant ships, despite Moscow abandoning a UN-brokered deal last summer. <\/p>\n However, despite their audacity, such operations won\u2019t alter the fundamental balance of the conflict. <\/p>\n Zaluzhny put it bluntly: \u201cThe level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.\u201d <\/strong>The use of surveillance and strike drones deprives both sides of the element of surprise within the confines of the battlefield. <\/p>\n \u201cThe simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing, and they see everything we are doing.\u201d <\/p>\n But the Russians\u2019 vast reserves of manpower and hardware (Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu boasted that he could raise 25 million men if necessary) mean they can continue bludgeoning the smaller Ukrainian military, making incremental gains at enormous cost. <\/p>\n So it was around Bakhmut last winter; perhaps the same will apply to the ruined Donetsk town of Avdiivka in the next few weeks. <\/p>\n The pool of military recruits in Ukraine has substantially shrunk; battlefield losses have deprived the military of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers and mid-rank officers. \u201cSooner or later we are going to find that we simply don\u2019t have enough people to fight,\u201d Zaluzhny told the Economist in November. <\/p>\n The arrival of F-16s fighter jets in the spring will undoubtedly help the Ukrainian air force challenge Russian combat planes and support their own ground forces, but they will be no silver bullet. Basic training is one thing; flying into the teeth of Russian air defenses another. <\/p>\n The same would apply even if the US agreed to supply longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine. (UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles have helped target the Russian rear.) <\/p>\n In any event, the paralysis over funding has blocked the pipeline of US weaponry and Europe does not have the capacity to fill the gap. <\/p>\n Some leading analysts conclude it\u2019s time for a clear-eyed reassessment. <\/p>\n \u201cUkraine and the West are on an unsustainable trajectory, one characterized by a glaring mismatch between ends and the available means,\u201d write Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan in Foreign Affairs. <\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s goal of recovering all its territory is \u201cout of reach,\u201d they say bluntly. <\/strong>\u201cWhere we are looks at best like a costly deadlock.\u201d <\/p>\n They recommend that Ukraine shifts to a defensive posture in 2024 to stem losses, which would \u201cshore up Western support by demonstrating that Kyiv has a workable strategy aimed at attainable goals.\u201d <\/p>\n The Russian military, which has by and large proved inept in offensive operations, would thereby find it even more difficult to take ground. <\/p>\n To others, such a shift would essentially reward aggression, enabling Russia to pause and regroup, with potentially dangerous consequences for others in Russia\u2019s near-abroad. It would also send the wrong message about US commitment to other allies, such as Taiwan. And it\u2019s a non-starter, politically, in Kyiv. <\/p>\n Biden said during Zelensky\u2019s visit that \u201cPutin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine. We must, we must, we must prove him wrong.\u201d <\/p>\n It smacked of desperation. Haass and Kupchan say, \u201cUkraine would be wise to devote incoming resources to its long-term security and prosperity instead of expending it on the battlefield for little gain.\u201d <\/p>\n There are certainly signs of tensions within Ukrainian society as the conflict nears its second anniversary and the economy struggles to start growing again, after shrinking by one-third. The longer several million Ukrainians live elsewhere in Europe, the less likely they are to come back. <\/p>\n For now Zelensky and his inner circle show no sign of compromise. Zelensky won\u2019t countenance a truce or negotiations. \u201cFor us it would mean leaving this wound open for future generations,\u201d he told TIME in November. <\/p>\n Instead, barring some unlikely collapse in morale on either side, the same towns and villages destroyed over the last two years will still be fought over in the next. Ukraine will have the means to survive, but not to win. <\/p>\n\n A year ago, a resolute President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled direct from the battlefield of Bakhmut to address the US Congress and meet with President Joe Biden. He was feted as a hero; Ukraine\u2019s determination to resist Russian aggression met with strong bipartisan backing in Washington. One year on, the outlook looks much grimmer. A long-anticipated <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Battlefield slog<\/h2>\n