Ukraine is battling Russia for endurance and faces critical war tests

Ukraine faces dwindling reserves of ammunition, personnel and Western support. The counter-offensive it launched six months ago has failed. Moscow, once awash in recriminations over a disastrous invasion, is celebrating its ability to sustain a protracted war.

The war in Ukraine has reached a critical juncture as months of brutal fighting have boosted Moscow’s confidence and left Kiev uncertain about its prospects.

The momentum was palpable last week when Vladimir V. Putin casually announced plans to run for another six years as Russia’s president, drinking champagne and bragging about the growing competence of Russia’s military. He stated that Ukraine has no future given its dependence on external aid.

That confidence contrasted with the sense of urgency brought to Washington this week by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who urged Congress to pass a stalled spending bill that includes $50 billion more in security aid for Ukraine.

Speaking at the White House with Mr. Zelensky, President Biden said lawmakers’ inability to approve the package would “give Putin the greatest Christmas present they could possibly give him.”

But Zelensky’s pleas failed, at least for now, with Republicans in Congress, who insist that additional aid to Ukraine can only come if migration is curtailed at the United States’ southern border. After meeting with Mr. Zelensky, House Speaker Mike Johnson said his skepticism had not changed.

The reports from Moscow and Washington illustrated the growing pressure on Ukraine as the country shifts to a defensive posture and braces for a harsh winter of Russian strikes and energy shortages. Kiev is struggling to maintain the support of its main backer, the United States, a country now engaged in another war, in Gaza, and the 2024 presidential campaign.

Looming over Kiev’s prospects is the possible return to office in 2025 of former President Donald J. Trump, a long-standing opponent and praiser of Mr. Putin who was impeached in 2019 for withholding military aid and under pressuring Mr. Zelenskiy to investigate Mr. Biden and other Democrats.

Nearly 22 months after the start of the war, polls show US support for continued financing of Ukraine declining, especially among Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center questionnaire Just under half of Americans believe the United States provided the right amount of support to Ukraine or should provide more.

Mr Johnson said money for Ukraine would require greater scrutiny of spending and “a transformative change” in security at the US border with Mexico. “So far we haven’t gotten either,” he said.

But the White House still has time to try to hammer out an agreement that includes border security, and Mr. Zelensky said he remained optimistic about bipartisan support for Ukraine, adding: “It is very important that we the end of this year will be able to send a very strong signal from our unit to the aggressor.”

A break in US funding would risk proving Putin right in his long-standing belief that he can exhaust Western resolve in global politics and conflict. Although his government bungled the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has regrouped, in part because Putin was willing to accept huge losses.

“Putin, shortly after the initial offensive failed to produce the results Russia had hoped for, settled for a long war, estimating that Russia would ultimately have the greatest endurance and endurance in this fight. said Hanna Notte, an expert on Russian foreign and security policy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Russia has adapted, ramping up domestic production of ammunition and weapons and importing crucial equipment from Iran and North Korea, all with the aim of prolonging a long war, Ms. Notte said.

“I think there was a kind of dismissive attitude: ‘Let the Russians get together with these pariahs, with these global outcasts, and good luck to them,’” Ms. Notte said.

But that support has been meaningful for Moscow on the battlefield, she said, especially as Iran helps Russia improve its domestic drone production. Ukraine, meanwhile, is struggling to obtain enough ammunition and weapons from the West, where countries do not operate on a war footing and face significant production bottlenecks.

Despite his advantages in numbers and weapons, Mr. Putin also faces limitations, and military analysts say Russia is not in a position to launch another attack on the Ukrainian capital Kiev or other major cities.

Russia lost huge numbers of personnel during its offensive maneuvers last year and gained little territory except the city of Bakhmut. With Mr. Zelensky ordering his troops to build defenses along the front, Russia could continue to suffer heavy losses without getting much in return.

Faced with continued signs of dissatisfaction over last year’s mobilization, the Kremlin appears unwilling to make another forced appeal before Russia’s presidential election in March, if at all.

“What we’ve seen in this war is that defense generally provides significant advantages,” said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Yet Ukraine, which depends on the West for weapons and financing, faces short-term pressures that Russia does not experience. Kiev’s allies do not have the ammunition and equipment to mount another counteroffensive, making a major new campaign unlikely for most of 2024, analysts and former U.S. officials said.

The United States is by far Ukraine’s main financier, accountability about half of donated weapons and a quarter of foreign aid funding. The battle in Congress, which has become bogged down in a partisan dispute over border security, has unnerved many Ukrainians.

“Today Ukrainians are beginning to suspect that the US wants to force us to lay down our arms and conclude a shameful ceasefire,” Yuriy Makarov, a political commentator for the Ukrainian magazine Ukrainsky Tyzhden, said in an interview. “The fact that the Ukrainians practically destroyed Russia’s professional army, which until recently was the main enemy of the United States, does not seem to be taken into account.”

The failure of this year’s counteroffensive has exacerbated political friction in Ukraine, particularly between Mr Zelenskiy and the military chief, General Valery Zaluzhny. A month after Mr Zelensky publicly chastised the commander for saying the war had reached an impasse, the two have yet to appear in public together.

There are signs that Russia plans to be more aggressive this winter. After weeks of targeted attacks on the city of Avdiivka, Russia launched a general offensive along the eastern front this weekend, the commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, told Ukrainian news media.

The fighting promotes Russia’s increased access to artillery ammunition. Earlier this year, NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg estimated that Ukraine was firing 4,000 to 7,000 artillery shells per day, while Russia was firing 20,000.

The United States has delivered more than two million 155-millimeter artillery shells and brokered supplies from other countries. But the supplies of the Western armies, which had not expected to wage a major artillery war, were dwindling.

Ukraine also needs ammunition for air defense to prevent Russian salvos of exploding drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles from breaching the air defense blanket over the capital and key infrastructure.

The United States and its allies have provided a dozen types of air defense, advanced NATO systems that have allowed businesses to open their doors and cities to resume their normal work and sleep rhythms. But as Russia fires thousands of cheap Iranian-made Shahed drones, Ukraine’s air defense ammunition is running out.

A tipping point looms if Russian missiles can reliably breach gaps, hit military targets such as airports and blow up electricity and heating infrastructure to dampen economic activity with power outages, making Ukraine even more dependent on Western aid.

“They can continue to do this for as long as necessary,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former Ukrainian economy minister, said of the Russian attacks. Over time, declining political support for Ukraine in the West will provide an incentive to continue reducing Kiev’s arsenal, he said. “If they feel that Ukraine will lose support, they will try harder.”

Ukraine also faces challenges due to staff turnover.

Kiev does not reveal mobilization targets or casualties, but a former battalion commander, Yevhen Dykyi, estimates that Ukraine will need to deploy 20,000 soldiers monthly until next year to maintain its army, replacing both the dead and wounded and allowing rotations.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “some things, despite all the military tricks and technologies, cannot be compensated for by mere numbers.”