Ukraine

Simon Tisdall, The Guardian - Ukrainian heroism amid horror has become so familiar, it’s almost taken for granted. But as Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, escalates the war, raining nightly terror on Kyiv and other cities using record waves of armed drones, as US support and peace efforts falter, and as Ukraine’s overstretched frontline soldiers face exhaustion, such complacency looks increasingly misplaced. A no longer hypothetical question becomes ever more real and urgent: what if Ukraine falls?

Answer: Ukraine’s collapse, if it happens, would amount to an epic western strategic failure matching or exceeding the Afghanistan and Iraq calamities. The negative ramifications for Europe, Britain, the transatlantic alliance and international law are truly daunting. That thought alone should concentrate minds.

It has been evident since the dying days of 2023, when its counteroffensive stalled, that Ukraine is not winning. For most of this year, Russian forces have inexorably inched forward in Donetsk and other eastern killing grounds, regardless of cost. Estimated Russian casualties recently surpassed 1 million, dead and wounded. Still they keep coming. While there has been no big Russian breakthrough, for Ukraine’s pinned-down, under-supplied defenders the war is now a daily existential struggle. That they manage to keep going at all is astonishing.