This week, US lawmakers overcame a seemingly interminable partisan gridlock and threw a 61-billion-dollar lifeline to Ukraine. This aid will bolster Ukraine’s vincible air defence and provide it with sorely needed artillery ammunition. Yehor Cherniev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s national security committee, characterised the aid as a ‘lifeline’, confirming the desperate nature of the times.
This package is generous but falls short of the demand of $95 billion. Previously, from the outbreak of the conflict until January 2024, Ukraine had received $46.3 billion in military aid from the US. But such is the parlous situation that even this bounty will not cater to everything on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wish list, whose forces are struggling to check the creeping onslaught of Russian forces.
Unless Ukraine shows a dramatic turnaround on the battlefield, aid in the future may be hard to come by. If Donald Trump wins a second term, it may bring down the curtain on military assistance altogether. The European allies are already struggling to provide weaponry in sizeable numbers and in a timebound manner.
Even with this aid, Ukraine is unlikely to turn the tide and force Russian forces to retreat. Indeed, the reverse may be more imminent. Several ‘battlefield indicators’ point to another resurgent Russian offensive. Unfortunately, for Ukraine, it is beginning to smell like endgame.
The first sign of the incipient fall of dominos came with the loss of Adiivka. Russians had been attacking Adiivka since October, spearheading the assault with artillery and 80-100 glide bombs (or KABs) each day. These barrages were destroying fortifications faster than they could be rebuilt. Unable to contain the Russian onslaught, Ukraine’s head of the armed forces, Gen Syrskyi, chose to withdraw, a striking departure from the unyielding defence put up earlier by Ukraine in an equally tense fight over Bakhmut. What is worse, many Ukrainian soldiers could not be pulled out in time. The shortage of artillery ammunition was the critical reason for the loss.
Around the same time, in an unusual moment of candour, Zelensky admitted to losing 31,000 soldiers since February 2022. These losses are debilitating for more than one reason. The Russians, with a population three times the size of Ukraine, are in a far better position to replenish battlefield losses of soldiers while Ukraine is struggling to recoup lost numbers. The Washington Post pointed out that though Zelensky’s office announced that one million people had been mobilised, only about 300,000 people had fought on the front lines. No one can account for the remaining 700,000. The mobilisation has been a steep slope, and most applicants look for posts far away from actual fighting.
The deficiency of morale among civilians is mirrored among soldiers on the battlefield. In 2023, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive with great and needless fanfare. After five months of fighting, that effort sputtered to a standstill. Ukraine did manage to capture 370 square km of territory but failed to reach the city of Tokmak, one of the offensive’s ‘minimum goals’. The effort ended in a stalemate and did little to stabilise Ukrainian forces’ morale.
Dissatisfied with the direction of the war effort, President Zelensky fired Military Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny in February. But within a month, perhaps fearing ‘palace intrigue’, Zelensky appointed Zaluzhny as ambassador to Britain.
In the meantime, Russian confidence has seen an uptick. Russian drone and missile attacks have become increasingly audacious. One wave of attacks was launched on Odesa city in the first week of March while Zelensky and the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were on a visit. It appeared that Putin now cared even less about world opinion. The landslide victory in the presidential ‘election’ and the failure of Western economic sanctions to debilitate Russia have added to that confidence.
This can also be reflected in Russian tactics. So far, the war has been fought on the ground and dominated by artillery and drone exchanges. Air power has played a relatively limited role; Ukraine’s air resources were limited, and the Russians could not dominate the skies as expected. But that paradigm has shifted, and the Russians are increasingly using aircraft to drop powerful glide bombs, thus paving the way for infantry to move in for capture. This tactic was evident in the battle for Adiivka.
Ukraine, too, has made efforts to reinforce its air force. 12 F-16 pilots are under training in Denmark, Britain and the US. But by the time they returned after ten months of training, Ukraine would have received only six out of the 45 F-16s and similar jet fighters promised by the European allies. It is a case of too little too late. The imbalance is no different in the field of electronic warfare. Russia has far better electronic warfare resources, including jammers, and has better coordination between its units.
This is not to deny that Ukraine’s fight has been tenacious, and a few of its successes have been spectacular. For example, despite the lack of a traditional navy, Ukraine has sporadically hit Russian ships and, arguably, sunk 15 Russian ships. This includes the sinking of the flagship Moskva in April 2022. These naval victories reopened the western Black Sea routes for shipping grain from Odesa. Ukrainian drones have repeatedly hit Russian cities and towns and damaged petroleum facilities in Nizhny Novgorod, Oryol.
But the larger picture is of Ukraine on the back foot and fighting to stay in the same place.
Russia, on the other hand, has already captured vast tracts of Ukrainian territory and is getting ready for the next decisive push. The war’s outcome will hinge on Ukraine’s ability to thwart that offensive, recapture some ground and on Zelensky’s success in eliciting continued support from home and abroad. This is a tall order. The West may not have the stomach for endless support, mainly when there are other prominent geopolitical distractions in Gaza, the South China Sea, Yemen, Iran and Taiwan demanding its attention. On the other side, Putin, as eminent scholar Fareed Zakaria recently opined, “sees himself in a take-no-prisoners battle with the West.”
This is a crucial year for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Ukraine may have to sue for peace between now and by the time the next US President is sworn in on 20 January 2025. It is beginning to smell like the end, and yes, the good guys sometimes finish last.
(Maj Gen Neeraj Bali is an Army veteran and the author of the bestselling book The Winning Culture – Lessons from the Indian Army to Transform your Business)