Ukraine is waking up to reality

Ukraine won the war of 2022. That was the year of Ukraine’s victory. Putin’s troops had to withdraw from Kiev and Kherson, and fled Kharkiv.

But the year 2023 has not been so good. Russian generals have learned from their mistakes and the learning curve was quite steep. While Ukraine was engaged in a bloody war of attrition in Bakhmut, Russia erected impregnable defenses in the south. They laid minefields. No minefields though minefields – hundreds of kilometers long.

Also, Russia fooled the satellites. Southern Ukraine is basically a steppe crossed by strips of forest planted to prevent erosion. They are called exactly like this: lesopolosa, “forest belt”. It turns out that every strip of forest was fortified by Russia. Hollowed out inside out, filled with troops and fortresses. The Ukrainians, relying on the expected digital transparency of the battlefield, missed the preparations.

Still, Ukrainian troops advanced. They cut a bridgehead, crushed the first line of Russian defenses and closed in on the important railway hub of Tokmak. The Russians counterattacked, trying at all costs to regain lost ground, smashing their reserves against the new front line.

Ukraine had never seen one during the entire war. It was a hand-to-hand combat in the trenches, with huge losses to Russia and all the tactical advantages of the Ukrainian side; the Ukrainians were destroying the Russian reserves. But the attacks were not in vain: while Putin spent his best troops, new formidable defense lines were created in the rear, new mines were planted. The current attack on Avdiivka follows the same pattern; it is causing incredible Russian losses, but it put a damper on Ukraine’s hopes of taking Tokmak.

Russia began successfully using electronic countermeasures and new precision Lancet drones. Russian helicopters now stay out of reach of Ukrainian air defenses, using an analogue of the famous Israeli spike Missile NLOS (no-line of sight) with a range of nine miles. Putin has a huge stockpile of obsolete unguided aerial bombs. These were once useless; Russia had total air superiority only in Mariupol, which Russian planes bombed mercilessly.

Not anymore, today these bombs are equipped with primitive guidance systems and planes drop them from a safe distance of 30 miles. It’s cheap and primitive, but in war, if it works and is simple, it’s the best solution. Not exactly regained air superiority, but close.

War is a bloody stalemate that can hardly be stopped. If Putin achieved any success, it would immediately be countered with a new US weapons cache: for example, the ATACMS recently took out a dozen Russian helicopters right at the airfield. If the Ukrainians advanced substantially, Putin would mobilize more troops.

But it’s not just the first lines. The situation is much more serious.

Western sanctions did not destroy Russia’s economy, they repositioned it. Oil that was sold in Europe now goes to China and India via a fleet of “Phantom cistern calls.” In September, Russia earned $18 billion in oil revenue. Putin is planning spend about 110 billion dollars on war in 2024, and that’s just the open part of the budget. Ukraine will be lucky if it gets $60 billion from all its allies combined.

What is even more surprising, the Russian economy is recovering. The Western-oriented creative class in the big cities is very high, but almost all other strata of Russian society are better off. Poor people in impoverished Russian regions are, for the first time, earning good money enlisting to serve. If they are killed, their families receive money they never dreamed of. Wages in military factories have increased, and regular wages have also increased due to labor shortages. It’s kind of military keynesianism.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine itself, things are not so bright. The initial incredible enthusiasm has waned, replaced by the usual trench horrors. People are hiding from the draft, the US insists on increasing the size of the Ukrainian military, and Kiev is fighting back by asking for modern weapons to keep the army smaller. Soldiers on the ground are looking for someone to blame, and the usual scapegoat is corruption.

President Zelensky is increasingly messianic. In his United Nations speech in September, he criticized Ukraine’s staunchest European ally, Poland, even going so far as to suggest that “set the stage for the Moscow actor“.

It was unwise to accuse a country that spared no effort to selflessly help Ukraine with weapons and refugees over a trade dispute over grain imports on the eve of Polish elections. When the former president of the European Commission said that Ukraine is corrupt at all levels of society, Zelensky accused him of spreading “Russian narratives“. Apparently, Ukrainian corruption is a Russian propaganda ploy.

Apparently the election is also a Russian ploy. This is not the right time for elections, President Zelensky recently declared, and these talks are “politically divisive” and “manipulations that only Russia expects.” It is too difficult to have elections in the country that is fighting for its survival. And, since Zelensky is adamant on the 1991 border, the fight can go on forever.

More and more nationalist rhetoric is coming from Ukraine. “Russians are Asian,” said Alexei Danilov, head of Ukraine’s Security Council. declared. “We are different from them. Our key difference is our humanity.” One wonders if this is the right kind of discourse to secure the weapons needed to retake Crimea. After all, although legally part of Ukraine, Crimea is populated primarily by ethnic Russians

Still, in Ukraine, the political decision of the failed summer offensive is approaching. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, He has just admitted that the war is at a standstilland Oleksiy Arestovich—a brilliant and eccentric former adviser to the president who had an almost magical influence over the crowds in the first months of the war—has just launched his presidential campaign with a hitherto taboo suggestion that Ukraine may give up occupied territories in exchange for joining NATO. It was this breaking of ranks that prompted Zelenskyy’s desperate speech about “divisive manipulations.”

While the wounded and traumatized Ukrainian democracy is slowly waking up to the unpleasant truth, the Russian dictator lives in an alternate reality in which he is fighting a world war against America, and winning.

Yulia Latynina, a writer and journalist, worked for the radio station Echo of Moscow and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta until they were closed as part of the current war in Ukraine. He has received the Defender of Freedom Award from the United States Department of State.