Why Ukraine’s war is in a bad place

KYIV — U.S. President Joe Biden will allow Ukraine to use long-range U.S. weapons inside Russia — but that comes after years of pleading from Kyiv that has seen Ukrainian forces lose ground to Russia along much of the front.
Russia, with the help of North Korea, is staging a furious and bloody offensive against Ukraine’s beachhead in Russia’s Kursk region — the reason for the change in U.S. policy on using Army Tactical Missile Systems deep inside Russia. Moscow is also continuing to make steady advances against defending Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian analysts from Deep State project report in their daily updates.
Ukraine is struggling to stop Russian troops due to exhaustion, lack of arms and ammunition and not enough well-trained reserves. 
“We are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives,” Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement.  
So how did things get so hard for the Ukrainians this year and what does it mean for efforts to end the fighting?
Ukraine was able to repel the initial Russian invasion in 2022 because it had the men to do so.  
“In 2022, we had a fairly serious reserve of people with real combat experience from Donbas against what was then Russian military showmanship,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow with Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies.
But the last three years have seen Ukraine plead for weapons from its allies — artillery, armored cars, tanks, short-range missiles, fighter jets and long-range missiles. The same dynamic is repeated each time; allies delay out of worry over crossing Vladimir Putin’s red lines before relenting and sending some supplies to Ukraine, but usually too little and too late to make a big difference on the battlefield.
“We’re forced to fight in the war of attrition without unlimited weapons supply that we have to compensate using our people,” Bielieskov said.
The true numbers of dead and wounded are shrouded in secrecy and often inflated or deflated according to propaganda needs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed in the war; The Wall Street Journal reported the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000, although Zelenskyy later called that “a lie.”
Russian dead and wounded are thought to be higher: Ukraine’s General Staff estimates that more than 654,000 Russian personnel have died. Western analysts are more conservative, putting the total number of dead and wounded Russians at about 600,000.
While Ukraine struggles to save personnel, Russia has made heavy losses a part of its “meat wave” military strategy.
“The balance of power on some in sections of the front is one to eight, therefore the armed forces have to withdraw to preserve the life and health of personnel,” the General Staff press service told POLITICO.
Russia is breaking the bank to pay for new recruits. Officially, men signing up to fight get as much as 1 million rubles (€9,453) in total payments to join the army.
Russia has also acquired thousands of troops from North Korea.
Ukraine’s early burst of patriotic fervor has waned with the war now in its third year, the body bags filling, and men returning home injured and disfigured.
Under pressure from its allies and the Ukrainian military, the government lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25, but many analysts feel that’s still not enough.
A string of videos of military commissars beating men and grabbing them from the streets, and a wave of corruption scandals featuring military and medical commission offices, as well as videos of Russians killing Ukrainian POWs, have scared off potential recruits, with as many as 650,000 men of fighting age fleeing illegally abroad.
Draft dodgers interviewed by POLITICO say they now question whether the sacrifice is worth it and doubt whether Ukraine is capable of defeating Moscow’s forces.
Ukraine’s remaining battle-hardened troops feel tired and trapped.
“Most of us have accepted it. But we are exhausted. So, we need to run faster and not stop, because it is a marathon,” Yaryna Chornohuz, a senior marine, said at a recent defense forum in Kyiv.
“I understand why there’s no demobilization. But a long enough recovery period makes you want to come back. If a system of rotations is organized and there are more recruits and transfers between units — our army will renew its strength,” Chornohuz added.
Kyiv has been calling for more weapons since before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Although it now has one of the world’s best-equipped militaries, it’s still too little and too slow to fully counteract Russia’s advantages.
“It is difficult to convince people to join the defense forces due to lack of weapons and poor training,” Bielieskov said. “We should have also fixed this together with partners. But we tell our partners to give more weapons to be able to attract more people into the fight. And they say we first have to attract more people and then they’ll consider giving us more weapons.”
The U.S. has already provided €56.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine, while the EU has sent €54.6 billion as of Aug. 31, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said earlier this month.
Kyiv needs more, although it is noting an uptick in deliveries. “We are recording an increase in supplies, especially in artillery,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.
Ukrainians think Western tactics of escalation management aimed at not provoking Russia have lengthened the war and harmed Kyiv’s position.
“Fearing Russia, partners never met our military needs. And as a result, they now got China, Iran, and North Korea in the war with Ukraine,” a former top Ukrainian military commander told POLITICO, speaking on condition of being granted anonymity to be able to speak on sensitive matters.
In an interview with POLITICO earlier this year, Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s former defense minister, complained that even when Western determination was running high, getting the gear Ukraine needed was like pulling teeth. 
“Everyone wants to back a winner — it’s part of human nature,” Reznikov said.
The U.S. insists it is doing enough.
“Anytime throughout the war when we thought that Ukraine could benefit from our weapons systems and capabilities, we’ve acted to give Ukraine those weapons systems,” a White House official said.
Russian generals may lose thousands of soldiers in “meat wave” attacks, but their brutality toward their own men and toward Ukrainians doesn’t mean they’re idiots.
Russia’s military has shown an ability to learn and adapt — dealing with Ukraine’s new capabilities, from longer range artillery to M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, Western main battle tanks and engaging in a tech arms race over drones.
“When we are told we should fight Russia’s quantity with Ukrainian quality, people forget that Russia also creates problems for our equipment. It has become quite good at shooting down our drones. As a result, you cannot oppose Russian quantity with quality,” Bielieskov said.
Senior Ukrainian commanders told POLITICO that their former commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny dubbed the conflict ‘the War of One Chance.’
“By that, he meant weapons systems become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians,” an officer said. “For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully — but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
All of those factors leave Ukraine in a quandary.
Its official war aim is to restore the country’s international borders, including retaking Crimea, but there is a growing recognition in Kyiv and the West that Ukraine has neither the men, nor the arms nor the Western political support necessary to do that.
There is rising political pressure in parts of the West for Ukraine to cut a deal to end the fighting — something that’s especially prevalent in the new team around Donald Trump.
For now, the Kremlin shows no sign of toning down its maximalist war aims.
Moscow’s conditions amount to Kyiv’s capitulation, demanding Ukraine withdraw from Russia-claimed areas, abandon intentions to join NATO, guarantee rights to Russian-speakers, demilitarize and “denazify.”
“The conditions that President Putin laid out in June remain fully relevant,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov` told reporters this week.
Zelenskyy insists that’s a non-starter.
“What kind of negotiations can be held with a killer? ” he told Ukrainian Radio. “If we are talking directly to Putin, directly to a murderer in the conditions we have now, without strengthening some important elements, this is a losing status for Ukraine from the start.”
Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report.