KIEV, Ukraine — Nearly 30 months into its war with Russia, Ukraine is facing growing challenges on the battlefield, with vital U.S. aid increasingly at the mercy of shifting political winds.
A six-month delay in military aid from the United States, Ukraine’s largest donor, paved the way for the Kremlin’s military to launch an offensive on the front lines where it is now fighting to halt the slow but steady advance of larger and better-equipped Russian forces.
“The next few months are probably going to be the toughest for Ukraine this year,” Carnegie Endowment for Military Affairs military analyst Michael Kofman said in a recent podcast.
In the background lurks another troubling concern for Ukraine: how long will the political and military support from the West, which is so vital to Ukraine’s fight, last?
Former President Donald Trump on Monday chose Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate for the Republican nomination in November’s US presidential election. Vance has said Putin’s invasion was wrong but wants the US to deal with its own problems and isn’t necessarily interested in a war thousands of miles away on another continent.
That view is consistent with Trump’s own stance, who has said that if elected he would end the conflict before his inauguration in January, though he has avoided saying how he would do so.
Meanwhile, Viktor Orban, the pro-Russian prime minister of Hungary, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, recently infuriated other EU leaders by holding unauthorized meetings with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Europe’s largest war since World War II has already claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides, including thousands of civilians, and shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
And Putin wants to prolong the war to discourage Western countries from sending billions more dollars to Kiev.
Ukraine’s main challenges are:
battlefield
The U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations said in May that Russia now controls 18 percent of Ukrainian territory, after its defending forces pushed out half of the areas Ukraine seized after a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Russia has not won any major battlefield victories since taking the eastern fortress of Avdiivka in February, but its forces are currently pushing ahead with border offensives in Ukraine’s Kharkiv in the northeast, Donetsk in the east and Zaporizhia in the south.
To buy time, Ukraine has adopted a flexible defense strategy of ceding some territory to weaken Russian forces until Western supplies can reach the brigades, but analysts warn that Russia is sure to win a long war of attrition unless Ukraine launches a surprise attack.
Russia claimed Sunday that its forces had taken the village of Urozhain in Donetsk, but Ukrainian officials said fighting was still ongoing there. Moscow’s forces are seeking to seize the nearby strategic hilltop city of Khasif Yar, which could allow them to advance deeper into Donetsk.
According to the Washington think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces have largely halted a Russian offensive around the northeastern city of Kharkiv, and the Kremlin is trying to create a buffer zone in the area to prevent Ukrainian forces from crossing the border.
Meanwhile, Russia has been firing missiles into rear areas and attacking civilian infrastructure, including a major air raid last week that killed 31 civilians and hit Ukraine’s largest pediatric hospital in Kiev.
Power grid
Paralyzing Ukraine’s power supply has been a key goal of Russia’s relentless long-range missile and drone attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the shelling had destroyed 80 percent of Ukraine’s thermal power plants and a third of its hydroelectric power plants.
Analysts say Ukraine is likely facing a harsh winter.
Ukraine is a vast country and needs a large air defense system to protect its entire territory. President Zelensky said on Monday that the country needs 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully protect its airspace.
ammunition
New ammunition supplies to Ukraine are trickling down to forces along the line of contact, reducing Kiev’s significant artillery disadvantage and allowing it to begin stabilizing the front line.
But it will take time for Kiev’s military to fully replenish its depleted reserves, and military analysts predict Ukraine will not be ready to strike back until the second half of this year at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Russia is spending record amounts on defense to fund its war of attrition.
Fortress
The Russian strategy is to raze towns and villages to the ground, making them uninhabitable and impossible for the Ukrainian military to defend. Powerful glide bombs flatten buildings. Then Russian infantry advance.
Analysts have said Ukraine was slow to build up its defenses but has made progress in fortifying them in recent months.
Russian forces have been advancing steadily in the east and south along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, but Ukrainian officials say there has been no significant progress recently and that advances have come at a heavy cost.
Expanded military service
In April, Ukraine passed a law expanding conscription to replenish depleted and exhausted military forces.
Zelenskiy said on Monday that operations were going well despite a lack of training grounds for recruits in the country, and that the 14th brigade had yet to receive promised Western weapons.
weapon
NATO countries took steps this month to ensure Ukraine can continue to receive long-term security assistance and military training.
Allied leaders meeting in Washington last week signed an agreement to deploy more man-portable Stinger air defense missiles.
Ukraine is also preparing to receive its first shipment of F-16 fighter jets donated by a European country.
Still, Zelensky remains frustrated: He says Ukraine cannot win the war unless the United States removes restrictions on the use of weapons on military targets on Russian territory.
___
Hutton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
