Russian President Vladimir Putin believes Ukraine and its allies are pushed to the limit, and he clearly hopes for Western collapse under his continued pressure. Ukraine is “running out” of weapons, he boasted last week in the Kremlin. “They don’t have their own foundations. When you don’t have your own foundations, you don’t have your own ideology, you don’t have your own industry, you don’t have your own money … then you don’t have a future. But we have a future.” Mr. Putin has tens of thousands of soldiers and millions of shells to keep throwing at Ukraine. He does not have to heed dissent, having silenced it with authoritarianism.
So now comes the hard part for Ukraine: finding a way to survive when all the difficulties are debated loudly and in the open, including a front-line stalemate and palpable public exhaustion. These are vulnerable moments for democracies; yet they can be overcome. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faces nothing less than saving the war effort during his visit to Washington this week.
The war effort indeed needs rescuing, both politically and militarily. Ukraine’s military leader, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, has acknowledged that the counteroffensive is stalled, and the sense of optimism, so powerful in the early months, has dimmed. In an extensive retrospective examination of the Ukraine counteroffensive, The Post found that it failed to deliver an expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory. The United States miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period; many in Ukraine and the West underestimated Russia’s willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries would tolerate, as well as its ability to build defenses and catch up in drone technology.
The stalemate is leading to political fissures inside Ukraine. Gen. Zaluzhny created a shock with his admission to the Economist that the war had reached a stalemate; meanwhile, Mr. Zelensky’s political rivals are starting to question his tactics, suggesting he should be more realistic and less rosy in his public statements about the war. This will be up to Ukraine to work out but can’t be pleasant amid the stress of war.
What the United States can do is give Ukraine a supply of weapons for the next year — enough to keep the country armed through the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign season. President Biden’s budget director has warned Congress that money is running out to buy more weapons for Ukraine and to procure them from U.S. military stocks, if Congress does not approve the president’s proposed $61.4 billion supplemental for Ukraine. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked action on the proposal out of pique that they were not getting enough attention on U.S. border issues. The immigration troubles do demand bipartisan attention from Congress, but last week’s maneuver undoubtedly encouraged Mr. Putin to think that democracy can’t deliver.
War fatigue among the public is taking its toll on support for aid to Ukraine. The latest Financial Times-Michigan Ross survey found that 48 percent of those questioned think the United States is spending “too much” on Ukraine, while 27 percent said the “right amount” and 11 percent said “not enough.” Republican voters are increasingly leaning against aid. These doubts partly stem from sheer uncertainty about how long the war will go on — a worry about forever wars from the U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There’s no simple answer, but there are choices to be made. The Biden administration should further tighten sanctions on Russia, especially the oil loophole that is allowing Russia to evade a West-imposed price cap and earn billions of dollars to fund the war. The United States should deliver a military package sufficient to see Ukraine through the hard year ahead, including much-needed ammunition, air defense munitions and more sophisticated weapons, such as air power.
It is up to Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Biden and Congress to show the man in the Kremlin that democracy does work. That’s what Ukraine is fighting for.