I've long said it is ridiculous to claim that the West is somehow fighting Russia through Ukraine. Ukraine wants to resist Russia's invasion and the West has a parallel objective of stopping Russia from being a threat to NATO. And the moment Ukrainians tire of fighting Russia, the war will end whether or not Russia has been ejected from Ukraine.
It is quite possible that 2025 is the last year one or both sides will be able to persuade their people and troops to make a supreme effort to attack and defeat their enemy on the battlefield.
The burden is mostly on Ukraine whose territory is occupied to learn lessons (as RUSI addresses) of their failed 2023 counteroffensive. But:
For Ukraine, the lead times involved in regenerating offensive combat power mean that renewed offensive operations are not viable in the foreseeable future. To that end, Ukraine must now reprioritise inflicting as much damage as possible on the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to buy the necessary time.
It's not a majority, but the number of Ukrainians who want a way out of this war is growing:
Almost 44 per cent of Ukrainians now believe it is time for Kyiv to hold official peace negotiations with Russia, a new survey published on the ZN news website has found. The figure is double the 22 per cent who said the same in May 2023.
But more than 80 per cent of those polled refused to back Vladimir Putin’s ceasefire demands, under which Ukraine would cede four partially occupied regions to Moscow.
A sizable minority of Ukrainians apparently think negotiations can get Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory--Crimea excepted, I guess.
But I've never assumed war weariness was a potential problem for Russia only.
We have a free democracy trying to persuade its people to keep fighting and dying for their their own country versus an autocracy that orders its people to die in large numbers--or else--to capture another country.
While Russia has the advantage in that it holds the ground in question, can Putin afford to stop attacking to hold what he has gained at such a high cost?
Which government has the more effective case and more receptive audience?
UPDATE (Monday): Russia continues to grind away, with the Avdiivka salient expanding toward an important objective:
Ukraine's top commander said on Monday that Russian forces were staging relentless assaults to try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in the east, and that there was active fighting taking place along the entire front line.
Nearly 29 months since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has stepped up its mobilisation effort to address its manpower shortages and been reinforced by supplies of western artillery shells, but Russian troops have continued to inch forward.
I keep hoping that renewed American aid and new Ukrainian troops are being accumulated for a significant counter-attack. Slowly losing ground to do that would be superior to feeding in new weapons and troops to hold the line.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Russia has been able to target less capable Ukrainian brigades holding the line to make gains at the Avdiivka salient:
Ukrainian units have been jamming their own drones in the sky as Russia capitalises on poor decision making to advance almost four miles towards a key garrison town.
Yuriy Butusov, a widely respected Ukrainian journalist covering the war, reported that Russian forces were deliberately targeting poorly organised and vulnerable units in a push for the Donetsk region town of Pokrovsk.
Exploiting enemy weaknesses is an advantage of having the initiative. Russia too has weak and vulnerable units on their front. But it doesn't matter because Ukraine can't attack them and exploit the weakness.
UPDATE (Friday): Russia continues to attack:
Ukrainian forces blunted one of the largest Russian mechanized assaults in Ukraine since October 2023 in western Donetsk Oblast on July 24. Geolocated footage published on July 24 shows that Ukrainian forces stopped a reinforced battalion size Russian mechanized assault near Kostyantynivka (southwest of Donetsk City) after Russian forces advanced up to the southeastern outskirts of the settlement.
A reinforced battalion isn't much. But for this war its a horde.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
NOTE: I'm now on Substack, with The Dignified Rant: Evolved.