President Volodymyr Zelensky toured Western capitals at the end of last year, calling for support amid growing international conflict fatigue and paralysis in the US Congress over new supplemental funding for Kiev. Around the same time, his top general, Valery Zalozhny, lamented the “stalemate” that began after a long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 failed to make a strategic advance against Russia’s deep defensive lines.
As my colleagues reported over the weekend, American officials and their Western counterparts expect a lean year ahead, as exhausted Ukrainian forces increasingly focus on shoring up their defenses rather than reducing Russia's territorial seizures. The Kremlin controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory – including Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014, and a wide swath of southeastern Ukraine. The American view of the course of the conflict undermines Zelensky's stated ambition to expel Russia by next October.
Last week, Pentagon officials came empty-handed to a monthly 50-nation coordination meeting on Ukraine, where domestic politics has been affected by future US money for weapons and aid. On the front lines, reports indicate that many Ukrainian units have reduced stocks of ammunition and artillery shells.
“We have been asked about our plan, but we need to understand what resources we will get,” Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko told my colleagues. “At the moment, everything points to the possibility that we will have less than last year, when we tried to counterattack and it did not work. … And if we have less than that, it is clear what the plan will be. It will be defence.”
Looming far beyond the battlefield is the political drama in Washington. House Republicans have already thwarted the latest tranche of funding that President Biden is trying to allocate to Kyiv. Analysts believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out on the possibility of former President Donald Trump returning to power, and he is the likely Republican presidential nominee for the November elections. Trump may reduce his support for Ukraine and take a more friendly view regarding the Kremlin's security concerns in Eastern Europe.
As my colleagues have reported, the Biden administration and European allies are working on a long-term multilateral plan aimed at avoiding this scenario and supporting Ukraine in the future. This includes pledges of economic and security aid extending into the next decade, and could pave the way for Ukraine to integrate into Western blocs such as the European Union and NATO. Biden is scheduled to unveil the key part of this strategy in the spring.
“This policy carries risks, including political risks, if Ukrainians begin to blame their government for frontline stagnation,” my colleagues wrote. Likewise, officials in Western capitals are keenly aware that their citizens' patience with financing the war in Ukraine is not unlimited. In the midst of planning, Washington also appears to be preparing the argument that even if Ukraine cannot regain all of its territory in the near term, it needs significant ongoing assistance to be able to defend itself and become an integral part of the West. “.
But in the near term, the shortage of front lines in Ukraine and divisions in Washington may strengthen the fate of the war. “While the first half of 2024 may bring few changes in control of Ukrainian territory, the materiel, personnel training and casualties each side suffers in the next few months will determine the long-term course of the conflict,” Jack Watling wrote. Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “The West actually faces a critical choice right now: either support Ukraine so its leaders can defend their territory and prepare for a 2025 offensive, or cede an irretrievable advantage to Russia.”
The West may have already squandered its best opportunity to enable Ukraine to fully liberate its territory. In his new book, Our Enemies Will Disappear: The Russian Invasion and the Ukrainian War of Independence, Wall Street Journal international correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov shows how Western governments have slowed military support to Ukraine for fear of provoking potential nuclear escalation. With Russia. The United States and its allies have sent Ukraine an unprecedented influx of aid, but critics say the careful calibration of that support has undermined the Ukrainian war effort.
“The United States and its partners refrained from providing Ukraine with Western-made capabilities when they could have had the greatest impact, and prevented Kiev from using Western weapons to strike military targets on Russian territory,” Trofimov wrote in a letter. Excerpted from his book published in The Washington Post. By the time many of these Western regimes arrived, in the second year of the war, Russia had built up its defenses, mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops, and shifted its industries into war mode. “Ukraine’s best chance for a clear and quick victory has disappeared.”
Other experts are not so sure, and stress that the Biden administration bears responsibility for avoiding an escalating confrontation with Russia. “More aid, sooner, would have been better — but there is no guarantee it would have delivered a decisive victory for Ukraine,” Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands wrote. The best guarantee for achieving this outcome was the threat of direct military intervention, a strategy that almost no one wanted to pursue because the risks were so clear, and perhaps so severe. In fact, it would have required Biden to cross Russian red lines more forcefully at the very moment when uncertainty about Putin's response was at its peak.
Instead, Ukrainians and their supporters lament what might have been after Ukrainian forces surprised almost everyone by repelling the initial Russian attack on Kiev and defiantly holding their ground in the first months of the war. “He opened his mouth like a snake and thought we were just another rabbit,” Zelensky told Trofimov in a 2022 interview, referring to Putin. “But we're not a rabbit, and it turns out it can't swallow us – and is in fact at risk of tearing itself apart.”
However, Russia has also stood its ground, withstanding international sanctions, and is preparing to launch new attacks in Ukraine, in addition to its ongoing indiscriminate missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. Kiev knows that its ability to resist depends on foreign support. “We will not be able to survive without the support of the United States, it is a real fact,” Zelensky said in a television interview this month.
