Diana Wagner was 36 years old and dreamed of the day when Ukraine would be freed from Russian occupation. Born in Germany, she had volunteered to help her new adopted country in the trenches as a medical officer. He died on January 30 while trying to rescue a wounded soldier in the area of ??Svàtove, on the eastern front. On Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, she was buried in Kyiv. And, with her, her dreams.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and – to a lesser extent – ??civilians have lost their lives in Ukraine since the Russian invasion, which will mark two years on the 24th. There are no official figures, but experts estimate the total number of casualties , including dead and wounded, in 170,000. A terrible sacrifice in a war whose outcome could not be more uncertain.
In the first year of the war, the repulse of the Russian offensive on Kyiv and the successful late summer Ukrainian counter-offensive in the east and south, with the recapture of Kharkiv and Kherson, fueled hopes that David could defeat Goliath. Thanks to Western aid, and to the motivation and strategic success of the Ukrainian army, the aggressor could be repelled. Russia looked like a giant with feet of clay, easy to topple. The enthusiasm was so great that they were no longer thinking only of recovering the occupied eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, but of reaching the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
After the winter paralysis, it was time for the great counter-offensive which – it was believed – was to change the course of the war. Launched in June 2023, it was a total failure. After several months of combat, the front remained largely unchanged. And so it continues today, with increasing pressure from the Russian army, which has mobilized large forces to get the city of Avdíivka, in the outskirts of Donetsk, a key point that finally fell into their hands yesterday.
The slogan now in Kyiv is to resist. The new head of the Ukrainian General Staff, General Oleksandr Sirski – appointed by President Volodymyr Zelensky just over a week ago to replace General Valery Zalujni – has expressed it bluntly: “We are in a new stage of the war , we have gone from offensive to defensive actions”.
The dream of an easy victory has vanished. Ukraine is faced with the evidence that war, unless it is very long-term and with the concurrence of extraordinarily favorable circumstances, is impossible to win and, on the contrary, very easy to lose. All that is needed is for the essential Western economic and military support to falter for everything to collapse.
In front, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which theoretically should have collapsed due to the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union – of a scope never seen before -, shows an insolent robustness. Fueled by military spending and financed by oil and gas revenues – the reduction in exports to Western countries has been offset in other markets – the Russian economy grew last year by 3.5% and the ‘ unemployment fell to 2.9%. This apparent prosperity hides imbalances that will weigh in the future, but now and here the situation is more than bearable.
On the battlefield, things have also improved for the Russians. Between 2022 and 2023 there has been a fundamental shift, military analysts have observed. The Russian army, weak at the beginning, has corrected its mistakes, adapted to the modern dynamics of war, fights with more conviction and has consolidated a solid line of defense that is very difficult to counter. His forces are numerically superior and he has no problems with the supply of weapons.
Given this, the Ukrainian army suffers from a lack of ammunition and urgently needs the incorporation of new contingents of troops to relieve those who have been fighting for two years – with almost no permits – and to cover casualties. The army has raised the need to mobilize 500,000 more soldiers. At this point, Western support is essential. If not to win, at least to resist. The EU approved this month – after overcoming Hungary’s veto – an aid of 50,000 million euros, and Germany and France pledged this Friday to guarantee Ukraine’s security in bilateral agreements. But the blocking of new US funds due to the Republican war against President Joe Biden in Congress is very disturbing.
“The prognosis for Ukraine depends very much on the future of Western aid, but even if the latter continues, the conflict will likely continue as a war of attrition for a long time, absent a collapse of will to fight in Russia or a blow to Moscow”, Stephen Biddle, professor at Columbia University and member of the Council of Foreign Relations, told Foreign Affairs. Having overcome the challenge posed by the rebellion of the Wagner Group, it does not seem that the Russian regime, which has physically annihilated all the opposition, will collapse any time soon. So the most likely risk is that the conflict remains frozen.
For this, in any case, it remains essential that the West is up to the task. Not very optimistic, the retired Australian general Mick Ryan, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned for his part: “If Russia’s advantage in strategic adaptation persists without an appropriate response from the West, the worst that can happen in this war is not stagnation, it is a defeat of Ukraine”. What could happen if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
