Ukraine feels the pressure of time and rising expectations

Featured Sponsor

Store	Link	Sample Product
UK Artful Impressions	Premiere Etsy Store

Ukraine just had a diplomatic triumph. Now the country is under pressure to continue with a military triumph.

After the pageantry of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, the focus will return to the brutal realities of the war in eastern Ukraine. The diplomatic and military support offered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the G7 was a great boost for the Ukrainian president. But the danger is that he could be remembered as the high water mark of international support for Ukraine.

The Ukrainians know that the best way to maintain Western support is to make spectacular progress on the battlefield. But Russian claims that they have finally seized control of the hotly contested and largely destroyed city of Bakhmut underscore just how challenging it could be.

There was no hint of this international pressure on Zelenskyy in the release issued by the G7. The group used the familiar formula that they will back Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” But the unofficial message is a bit more complicated: “As long as it takes. But it would be better if it doesn’t take too long.”

This sense of urgency does not reflect any lack of sympathy for Ukraine in major Western governments. Instead, there is concern that if Kiev’s long-awaited counteroffensive fails to turn the tide on the battlefield, it will be difficult for the country’s backers to maintain the current level of political, financial and logistical support.

The mounting pressure on Ukraine is closely linked to the 2024 US presidential election. The emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican favorite raises fears that the next US president will radically change policy on Ukraine. trump has boasted that he could end the war in a day, quite a different message from “as long as it takes.”

Even a Trump-dominated presidential election campaign is likely to visibly undermine the US bipartisan consensus on Ukraine. All sorts of arguments against backing kyiv will be aired, from the costs of the war to the dangers of escalation. Opinion polls in the US already show some decline in support of Ukraine.

All this gives Vladimir Putin reason to hope that if he can keep Russia fighting for another 18 months, Trump’s cavalry could appear on the horizon. The Kremlin is already flirting a lot with the former US president and his supporters. Russia’s latest list of sanctioned Americans includes people who have nothing to do with Ukraine but who are on Trump’s unofficial list of domestic enemies, like Brad Raffensperger, the official who resisted Trump’s pleas to “find” him more votes in Georgia.

Since the United States provides most of Ukraine’s military support, attitudes in Washington are critical. A change in the political atmosphere in the US will inevitably trickle down to Europe as well. The disturbances in the energy market caused by the war have already led European countries to spend some 800,000 million euros in energy subsidies. Economic discontent could translate into greater support for far-right and far-left populist parties that are sympathetic to Russia.

Then there is the issue of weapons supplies. Both the US and Europe have virtually emptied their inventories of relevant munitions, such as artillery shells, in their efforts to keep Ukraine supplied. Without converting to a wartime economy, Western arms factories cannot keep up with the battle. The fighting is so intense that, as a Western politician put it, “Ukrainians are consuming in hours what we produce in weeks.” Western national security officials have had to work as arms dealers, scouring world capitals from Seoul to Islamabad for fresh supplies of missiles and other weapons to send to the front lines.

The United States and the Europeans believe that their efforts have worked and that Ukraine now has enough weapons to mount a serious offensive. But the West’s weapons closet now looks pretty bare. It will not be fully restored by 2024, although by then the Ukrainians will be able to deploy the fighter jets they were promised last week.

Ukraine’s current counteroffensive is likely to start quietly with a series of probing missions that will look for weaknesses in the Russian line. But the extent of those Russian weaknesses remains the great “known unknown” of the war.

Some Western officials, who have worked closely with kyiv, believe the Ukrainians have a good chance of breaking through Russian lines and threatening Crimea. Others warn that the Russians are entrenched and inexperienced Ukrainian troops may have a hard time gaining ground. Pessimists fear that if the war remains stalemate next year, Putin may succeed in mobilizing hundreds of thousands of new troops for the next phase of the conflict. Although the Ukrainians have higher morale and better tactics, Russia has a larger pool of potential soldiers.

But even if Ukraine doesn’t make a breakthrough and Western support for kyiv begins to falter, that won’t be the end of the matter. Ukrainian officials say that, unlike their Western backers, they will never be able to afford to walk away from the conflict. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, likes to quote an adage attributed to John Lennon: “Everything will work out in the end. If it’s not right, it’s not the end.”

gideon.rachman@ft.com