CNN –
A year ago, determined President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled directly from the battlefield of Bakhmut to address the US Congress and meet with President Joe Biden. He was hailed as a hero; Ukraine's determination to resist Russian aggression received strong bipartisan support in Washington.
A year later, the outlook looks much bleaker. A long-awaited Ukrainian offensive in the south has made little progress. For now, Russia appears to have weathered international sanctions and turned its economy into a war machine.
Russian warfare, which incurs terrible losses in men and materiel but adds even more to the fight, has weakened the Ukrainian military's tactical and technological edge, its top general admitted in a candid essay last month.
The mood in Moscow seems grimly determined: the goals of the “special military operation” will be achieved and the fighting will continue until they are achieved.
As the long front line becomes increasingly calcified, the Kremlin senses greater skepticism among Kiev's Western supporters that Ukraine can win back the 17%. Part of its territory is still occupied by Russian forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is enjoying the much more partisan atmosphere in Washington, where many in the Republican Party are questioning the purpose of the Biden administration's push for $61 billion in additional aid to Ukraine and estimating that will have little effect on the battlefield.
At his first year-end press conference since the conflict began, Putin taunted: “Ukraine produces almost nothing today, everything comes from the West, but the free products will one day run out, and it seems that this is already the case.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is pleased with the more partisan attitude in Washington.
At the same time, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked a $55 billion EU financial aid package for Ukraine, prompting a German politician to say it was as if Putin himself was at the table.
That jeopardizes government spending on everything from salaries to hospitals.
Zelensky, who says he has recently become tired, has an increasingly difficult job as Ukraine's chief salesman as events in the Middle East divert attention from Ukraine as the biggest international crisis.
On the first anniversary of the invasion he predicted that “2023 will be the year of our victory!” He is unlikely to make the same optimistic forecast for the coming year.
Russia is not without vulnerabilities, but these have persisted for a long time–Expression. The conflict has deepened its demographic crisis through emigration and battlefield casualties. In 2022, almost 750,000 people left Russia; Analysts predict that even more people will have voted with their feet this year.
Labor shortages lead to rising wages and thus inflation. Evading sanctions and maintaining industrial production comes at a price, as much of that production is now spent on replacing huge battlefield losses and the budget deficit explodes accordingly.
The long-term forecast for the Russian economy is bleak – and that may be Putin's most fundamental legacy.
But as economist John Maynard Keynes once said, “In the long run, we are all dead.” In the short term, Putin appears untouchable. Re-election in March is a formality (the Kremlin has already recognized this). In the US, by contrast, a feverish campaign year could end with Donald Trump preparing for his second term in office. This is Kiev's nightmare and Moscow's dream.
Deeply partisan sentiment in Congress has thwarted the Biden administration's request for further aid to Kyiv. The funds currently allocated for military equipment are almost exhausted. One Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, said clearly: “We are failing Ukraine.”
The mantra in Western capitals in support of Ukraine was “as long as it takes.” But as President Biden stood next to Zelensky this month, he said the U.S. would support Ukraine “as long as we can.”
While global metrics for Ukraine deteriorate, there is little to cheer on that front.
The much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in June was intended to demonstrate the superiority of NATO's combined arms warfare strategy, drilled into newly formed Ukrainian brigades trained on muddy fields in Germany. But it was alien to Ukrainian military culture and lacked air superiority.
What should have been a sprint south to the Black Sea became a quagmire of dense minefields, with Western tanks being shot down from the air by Russian drones and aircraft.
Ukrainian units captured a maximum of 200 square kilometers of territory within six months. The goal of reaching the coast and Crimea and splitting Russian forces in the south remained a distant dream.
Kaniuka Ruslan/Ukrinform/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is tired.
With the front lines frozen, Kiev's intelligence services have turned to more spectacular attacks: This week they sank a Russian landing ship in Crimea and even sabotaged railway lines as far east as Russia. Success in the Black Sea has allowed relatively safe passage for merchant ships, despite Moscow abandoning a United Nations-brokered deal last summer.
But despite their boldness, such operations will not alter the fundamental balance of the conflict.
Zaluzhnyi put it bluntly: “The level of our current technological development has astonished both us and our enemies.” The use of surveillance and attack drones deprives both sides of the element of surprise within the boundaries of the battlefield.
“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy does and he sees everything we do.”
But the Russians' vast reserves of manpower and equipment (Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu boasted that he could muster 25 million troops if needed) mean they can continue to pummel the smaller Ukrainian military and make incremental gains at enormous cost.
This was the case last winter near Bakhmut; Perhaps the same will apply to the destroyed city of Avdiivka in Donetsk in the next few weeks.
The number of military recruits in Ukraine has shrunk significantly; Battlefield losses have deprived the military of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers and mid-level officers. “Sooner or later we will realize that we simply don’t have enough people to fight,” Zaluzhnyi told the Economist in November.
The arrival of F-16 fighter jets in the spring will undoubtedly help the Ukrainian Air Force challenge Russian fighters and support its own ground forces, but they will not be a panacea. Basic training is one thing; Another flies into the teeth of the Russian air defense.
The same would apply if the US agreed to supply longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine. (British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles have helped target the Russian rear.)
In any case, funding paralysis has blocked the US arms pipeline, and Europe does not have the capacity to fill the gap.
Some leading analysts conclude that it is time for a clear reassessment.
“Ukraine and the West are on an unsustainable path marked by a glaring mismatch between goals and available resources,” write Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan in Foreign Affairs.
Ukraine’s goal of regaining all of its territory is “out of reach,” they say bluntly. “Where we are, it looks like a costly dead end at best.”
They recommend that Ukraine adopt a defensive posture in 2024 to contain losses, which would “strengthen Western support by demonstrating that Kyiv has a viable strategy aimed at achievable goals.”
This would make it even more difficult for the Russian military, which has proven largely incompetent in offensive operations, to gain ground.
For others, such a shift would essentially reward aggression and allow Russia to pause and regroup, with potentially dangerous consequences for others in Russia's near abroad. It would also send the wrong message about U.S. commitment to other allies like Taiwan. And politically it is not an issue in Kiev.
Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery at Russian positions to support frontline troops in the direction of Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast.
President Biden said during Zelensky's visit: “Putin is betting that the United States will not deliver to Ukraine. “We must, we must, we must prove him wrong.”
It smelled of desperation. Haass and Kupchan say: “Ukraine would be wise to use incoming resources for its long-term security and prosperity rather than spending them for little gain on the battlefield.”
There are certainly signs of tension within Ukrainian society as the conflict approaches its second anniversary and the economy struggles to grow again after contracting by a third. The longer several million Ukrainians live elsewhere in Europe, the less likely they are to return.
Zelensky and his inner circle are currently showing no signs of compromise. Zelensky will not support a ceasefire or negotiations. “For us, it would mean leaving this wound open for future generations,” he told TIME in November.
Instead, the same towns and villages that have been destroyed over the past two years will continue to be contested next year, barring an unlikely collapse in morale on both sides. Ukraine will have the means to survive, but not to win.