Kyiv: don’t forget us

As a 20-month-old war grinds on, and global attention is diverted to the Middle East, Kyiv is growing increasingly fearful of war fatigue from its Western allies.

Andrii Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s powerful chief of staff, has issued a fresh plea to European nations to stick by his country, reminding them that this is a battle for their own security too. “Even if there are people who feel this fatigue, I’m sure they don’t want to wake up in a world tomorrow where there will be less freedom and less security, and the consequences of this last for decades”, said Yermak, speaking to Politico.

His warning comes after Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni became the latest world leader to signal a shift in mood from Kyiv’s allies. Late last week, during a prank phone call – in which she was duped into thinking she was speaking to the president of the African Union — Meloni admitted that “Ukraine’s counteroffensive is not going as expected…there is a lot of tiredness on all sides” and “everyone understands that we need a way out.”  

While both sides have continued to inflict heavy losses on the other, Meloni is right that Ukraine’s much-touted counter-offensive has not lived up to expectation. In an interview with The Economist last week, even Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny conceded that war has reached a deadlock: five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Meanwhile, Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”.

Now, crisis in the Middle East risks playing into Putin’s hands, with the warn-torn country competing against Israel for replenishment of its dwindling artillery stock – at a time when Moscow has just received a generous supply of shells from North Korea. 

Yesterday, Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelensky insisted Kyiv was “not ready” for peace negotiations with Russia. Yet he acknowledged the threat posed by the looming US election – and the possibility of Trump’s return to power.  When asked if Trump would back Ukraine, he replied: “Really, I don’t know.”

The former US president has boldly declared that he could end the war in Ukraine in just one day if he returned to the White House – a position which would inevitably mean making some fairly major concessions to Putin. 

There is also concern that, under his “America First” leadership, Washington – Kyiv’s biggest military funder by a long way – would stop sending money to Ukraine – a position already supported by over half of the members of the Republican House of Representatives. 

Moscow is counting on a collapse in Western support and in Ukrainian morale. Yet, Melinda Simmons, the Former Ambassador of the UK to Ukraine, insists this morale will be hard to break, even if Washington did withdraw its support. 

Speaking at the Price of War conference earlier this week, Simmons said we must remember that this is an existential fight for the people of Ukraine. If supply of US weapons dries up, Ukrainians will continue to fight. 

Yet even General Zaluzhny admits that a long war favours Russia. Not only is its economy ten times larger than Ukraine’s, it is also a country with a population three times the size – and one “where the cheapest resource is human life.”

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