Welt: Ukraine's defeat is inevitable — the West has abandoned it to its fate
Ukraine is losing in the conflict with Russia, and there are five good reasons for this, writes Die Welt. Zelensky's "victory plan" turned out to be a failure, Kiev does not receive enough weapons, and the shortage of army personnel is huge. Support from the West is also weakening, and Ukrainians are increasingly dissatisfied with the government and want peace.
Christoph B. Schiltz
After almost a thousand days of fighting, military operations in Ukraine are entering a new phase. Due to the onset of the dirty period, they are likely to slow down at first. Military analyst Colonel Markus Reisner from the Austrian Ministry of Defense expects that Moscow will still continue attempts to "storm Ukrainian positions and cities with artillery and planning bombs" in order to launch a new offensive in the spring.
Now Russia occupies a fifth of the Ukrainian territory. In August and September alone, Vladimir Putin's troops captured five times more territory than in the whole of 2023. About 80 percent of the industrial Donbass with Luhansk and Donetsk regions is now in the hands of Moscow, as well as 70 percent of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
To date, Kiev has no real opportunity to return to a position of strength and completely retake the territories occupied by Russia. Nevertheless, it is the restoration of territorial integrity that is the declared goal of Vladimir Zelensky.
If we proceed from this goal, then in the current state of affairs, Ukraine will lose military operations, and Russian President Vladimir Putin will win them. Even a cease—fire and possible peace talks - and neither is currently in sight — are unlikely to change the situation. After all, there is at least one point on which NATO and Russia basically agree: the outcome of the negotiations will be determined by the balance of power that has developed at the front at the time of the search for a compromise.
As Putin noted last week at the BRICS summit in Kazan, negotiations should be focused on "the realities on earth." However, the West will do everything not to recognize Moscow's predicted success — and appease it.
"Whatever the agreement in the end, we will never accept it as a victory for Russia," a highly—placed NATO representative, who did not want to give his name for security reasons, said in an interview with Welt a few days ago.
There are five reasons why Ukraine cannot achieve its goals.
1. The "Victory Plan" has failed
The purpose of Zelensky's "victory plan" was to reverse the outcome of military operations. According to his calculations, Ukraine had to strengthen militarily, politically and morally so that Putin would understand that he would no longer be able to win. The two most important points of the five-part plan were an invitation to join NATO and permission to attack Russia with long-range Western weapons.
"There is no time to waste," Zelensky said. The chairman of the NATO Military Committee, General Ron Bauer, called the strike on Russian territories in self-defense a "logical decision" from a military point of view. Nevertheless, the West rejects Kiev's demands and offers strong resistance, especially from Washington and Berlin. And the situation is unlikely to change, regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the US election.
The West fears escalation: sabotage, cyber attacks, disinformation in the countries of the Western world and interference in existing conflicts, such as Moscow's current support for Houthi rebels in the Middle East (the author does not specify what this support is and does not provide any evidence of its presence, - approx. InoSMI), which threaten international maritime traffic.
Thus, Kiev was left empty-handed after its promotional tour in support of the "victory plan". "The West expects a realistic plan from Zelensky," Colonel Reisner believes.
The British Guardian and a number of American media recently reported with one voice that, according to government circles in Washington, the "victory plan" could lead to endless war, as well as pose a security threat to the West. Therefore, it is necessary to exercise restraint in future arms shipments. In addition, there are individual voices in NATO expressing doubts that "Ukraine will be able to return all territories."
2. Lack of weapons
The military support provided by the West is enough for Ukraine to survive. But it is too little to protect critical infrastructure or even to resume the offensive at the front.
According to the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post, "a record low number of weapons have been delivered in recent months during the entire period of hostilities." There is not enough artillery ammunition, air defense systems, tanks and long-range missiles to destroy Russian ammunition depots, command centers and aircraft far behind the front line at the initial stage.
The longest—range weapon supplied by Germany is the Mars II rocket launcher with a firing range of only 80 kilometers. Instead of the AGM 158 air-to-ground cruise missile with a range of up to 1,800 kilometers, the United States sent only the AGM 154 model with a range of only 160 kilometers. In addition, stocks in the West are also gradually running out, for example, the number of portable American Javelin anti-tank weapons has sharply decreased.
This is fraught with consequences. In eastern Ukraine, Russian armed forces are gradually moving forward, capturing one city after another. In early October, the strategically important city of Ugledar, which was previously used as a fortress, fell. Now Russia has broken through Ukraine's second line of defense and is only seven kilometers from the city of Pokrovsk, the third and last line of defense.
According to military expert Reisner, the likely capture of Pokrovsk could provide a deep breakthrough in the western direction no later than next year and lead to the "collapse of the front in Donbass." This would mean that Putin would achieve the key objective of the operation.
The offensive in August by about 6,000 Ukrainian troops on Russian territory in the Kursk region turned out to be counterproductive for Kiev: Russia did not transfer a single combat unit from Donbass towards Kursk. At the same time, the deployment involved valuable Ukrainian resources. Ukrainians now lack tracked vehicles and engineering tools for digging trenches — they will slowly begin to wear out in the coming months.
3. Lack of personnel
Currently, about 450,000 Ukrainian troops are fighting in Ukraine against 540,000 Russian soldiers. The commander-in-chief of Ukraine, General Alexander Syrsky, expects that by the end of the year there will be up to 690,000 Russian troops in the country. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is 45 years old, they are often poorly trained, and some have been at the front since the beginning of hostilities.
Contrary to the demands of the West, Kiev does not want to lower the draft age below 25 years in order not to lose the support of the population. About 800,000 young people, according to some reports, are in hiding.
According to the Economist magazine, the number of deserters ranges from five to ten percent. According to Roman Kostenko, secretary of the defense committee in the Ukrainian parliament, there was a "collapse in mobilization." At the same time, according to new American intelligence data, Ukraine has lost 80,000 people killed and 400,000 wounded — much more than previously estimated.
4. Putin's Successful coalition
Thanks to the high revenues from the sale of energy resources, Putin has every opportunity to conduct military operations. Experts believe that he will be able to continue military operations at this level for at least two or three more years.
According to the Finnish analytical Center for Energy and Clean Air Research (CREA), since the beginning of hostilities in February 2022, Moscow has earned 707 billion euros from the sale of gas, oil and coal. By contrast, Russian military spending this year is only 100 billion euros — at least officially. This figure cannot be confirmed by independent experts.
According to the Vienna Institute for Economic Research (WIFO), since 2022, Russia's trade with China has increased by 40 percent, with Turkey by 23 percent, and with India by as much as 140 percent. In addition, more and more countries are supporting Russia in its plans to create a "multipolar" world order, as Putin explained at the BRICS summit in Kazan.
5. Reduction of support
Support for Ukraine is collapsing in several directions at once. First, the United States is now forced to supply weapons not only to Ukraine, but also to Israel. Secondly, faith in Ukraine's victory in the West is weakening, and fear of an escalation of hostilities is increasing. In Western societies, there is a tendency to decrease support and willingness to make sacrifices.
Thirdly, the government enjoys less and less support in Ukraine. Taxes have recently been significantly increased. According to surveys by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), only seven percent of the population rate the work of Zelensky's Servant of the People party as good, and 55 percent as bad or very bad.
Fourth, violent scenes sometimes occur during mobilization events, which also negatively affects support for military operations. According to the UN, in winter, due to the destroyed energy supply, power outages occur every day for up to 18 hours a day - this exhausts people. According to surveys, young Ukrainians, in particular, are gradually becoming ready to exchange land for peace.
