Ukraine, six months on

On 24 February, Russian tanks rolled over the Belarus-Ukraine border, throwing the global order into chaos and bringing butchery and destruction to European soil, writes Mattie Brignal.

Vladimir Putin planned for victory in three days. But Ukraine stood strong. Six months later, the conflict is grinding into something close to a stalemate.

Judged against Putin’s initial objectives, his war is an abject failure. Even so, four-fifths of the Eastern Donbas region is now under Russian control, as is Crimea and a stretch of Ukrainian Black Sea coast from Mariupol to Kherson.

Ukrainians, however, are defiant. “What for us is the end of the war?”, Volodymyr Zelensky asked his fellow countrymen in an emotional speech today, marking 31 years of Ukrainian independence. “We used to say: peace. Now we say: victory.”

The question is whether Ukraine’s allies have the appetite to keep up the fight.

British diplomats are worried they don’t, and are travelling to European capitals to shore up waning support, according to the Telegraph.

So far, public opinion within EU nations has been in favour of backing the Ukrainian war effort with hard-earned taxes. An energy crisis and acute economic pain this autumn and winter could change things.

Josep Borell, the EU’s top foreign diplomat, spelt it out yesterday. Vladimir Putin, he said, sees “the weariness of the Europeans and the reluctance of their citizens to bear the consequences of support for Ukraine. We will have to endure, and spread the costs within the EU.”

The US, by contrast, is poised to announce another $3bn of weaponry for Ukraine on top of the $10.6bn of military aid it’s already sent.

Coordinated support for Kyiv and an unprecedented raft of sanctions against Russia since March have shown reports of the West’s demise to be greatly exaggerated.

But the impact of sanctions has been mixed. Analysis by the Economist suggests the Russian economy is bearing up surprisingly well despite the detonation of an “economic nuclear bomb” on Moscow, thanks in large part to bumper hydrocarbons revenues. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has sold around $85bn-worth of fossil fuels to the EU.

Still, to the bloc’s credit, it has imposed a near total embargo on Russian crude oil. The Kremlin is looking for a new market for its huge oil surplus, and crossing its fingers that Iran may be the answer.  

If an international nuclear accord is struck with Iran, sanctions on trading with the Islamic Republic would be eased, giving Putin a “perfectly timed Plan B”. Many diplomats involved in the negotiations think a deal is close.

The same cannot be said of the war in Ukraine. The agreement of safe passage for grain-laden ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is the only diplomatic success so far. Peace negotiations are going nowhere.

At the same time, “victory” for either side, however loosely defined, seems remote. As the world teeters on the brink of recession and Ukraine remains reliant on military support from abroad, the willingness of Western citizens to endure pain as a matter of principle will shape how the war eventually ends.