Ukraine's Luck Going From Bad to Worse

Storms in the south of Ukraine may have hampered moves on the frontline last week, but Bulgaria's refusal to transfer 100 armored vehicles to Kyiv showed that in terms of bad luck for Volodymyr Zelensky, when it rains it really does pour.

The president of the NATO member, Rumen Radev, vetoed providing the vehicles on Monday because they were needed at his borders, amid an uphill fight by Kyiv to maintain the military support that its allies were happier to provide earlier this year.

It is the latest piece of bad news to beset Zelensky. In the last few weeks, his top commander said the war had entered a "stalemate", Vladimir Putin announced a boost in troop numbers, seemingly undeterred by sanctions, and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the Ukrainian president "is paying for mistakes he has made."

"Very difficult times lie ahead for Ukraine," Vuk Vuksanovic, associate at the London School of Economics think tank, LSE IDEAS, told Newsweek, "both the elites and societies in the West have become exhausted over the war."

Weapons Are Drying Up

With backing for Ukraine a Republican primary campaign trail hot point, White House Budget Office Director Shalanda Young said on Monday that American support for Kyiv could run out by the end of the year unless urgent action was taken.

The first procedural vote on President Joe Biden's $106 billion funding request, including $61 billion for Ukraine, is scheduled for later this week and much rides on whether Kyiv's biggest military donor can continue the support which has so far totaled $44 billion since Putin launched the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.

"As winter sets in, and as Congress heats up the debate about additional aid, the war is entering a crucial period for Ukraine," Peter Rough, senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, told Newsweek.

"Now is not the time for Western support to be put into jeopardy or for Western policymakers to dither on additional aid for Ukraine."

The U.S. has faced repeated calls from Kyiv for long-range versions of the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) which experts insist are crucial in the fight for Crimea, the peninsula seized by Putin in 2014 and which Zelensky has vowed to get back.

But there are wobbles from Ukraine's allies on other weapons. The U.S. said last month that the first shipment of rocket-propelled Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) that accompany the ATACMS will be delayed until 2024.

Germany has balked at providing its long-range missiles, the Taurus. Meanwhile, European Union member states are struggling to reach a budget deal in Brussels that would send 50 billion euros ($54 billion) to Ukraine, people close to the discussions have told the Financial Times, with Hungary standing firm in blocking aid packages.

Ukraine's reliance on Western support in the teeth of a growing reluctance among its allies, poses significant problems for Zelensky heading into the New Year.

"There is no way for Ukraine to pay civil servants or soldiers without budget help coming from the U.S. and the EU," said Čedomir Nestorović, geopolitics professor at ESSEC Business School, Singapore.

"Joe Biden is right to say that if Western countries do not help Ukraine, Putin will win," he told Newsweek, "what he does not say is that if Western countries help Ukraine, it does not mean that Ukraine will win."

Growing Criticism of Zelensky

There was disappointment in Western capitals at the slow progress made in Ukraine's counteroffensive launched in June aimed at retaking Russian-occupied territory. Many were also taken by surprise when a downbeat assessment was made by Zelensky's commander-in-chief Valeri Zaluzhnyi. He told The Economist that "for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented."

Whether part of a plan to manage Western expectations or an oblique call for more weapons from Kyiv's allies, Zelensky was spurred to reject the comments and insist on a message of continued resistance and refusal to negotiate with Russia.

In keeping with his previous career as a heavyweight boxing champion, Kyiv's mayor Klitschko pulled no punches when he said Zaluzhnyi had "told the truth" and even lied about the war's progress.

Defense analyst Viktor Kovalenko, who is a former Ukrainian soldier, said that frictions within Ukraine's political-military leadership "aren't something new."

"Foreign media simply don't write about internal issues inside Ukraine, preferring to portray Ukraine as orderly, managed and winning," he told Newsweek. "But the real situation is not that optimistic, and the delay with the U.S. Congress approval of the additional aid especially elevated nervousness in Kyiv."

"Those are not setbacks of Ukraine as they might look, but rather a visible splash of a dirty competitive environment from inside Ukrainian politics. This is truly upsetting to see in the critical time of Ukraine's fight for survival against Putin's Russia," he said.

However, Kovalenko believes those frictions "should not scare Western partners because they have leverage over the situation."

"Stronger commitment from the West to Ukraine is required," he said, "the renewal of financing from Washington will calm down the agitated Ukrainian leaders."

Russia's Slow Progress

Vuksanovic from LSE Ideas said "there will be a lot of bickering on who is to blame for the fact that Ukrainian forces overstayed in Bakhmut and [the] failed counter-offensive, further impairing Ukrainian fighting abilities."

Akin to the bloody fight for Bakhmut, is the fight for the city of Avdiivka, also in the Donetsk oblast, where Russian forces are intensifying their attacks and seeking to encircle Ukrainian troops.

British defense officials said last month that fighting there had contributed to "some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far," but according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), they had made advances north of the city on Monday.

Elsewhere in the war, Zelensky has touted Ukraine's gains in the Black Sea, no mean feat considering that his country does not have a naval fleet. Attacks from Ukrainian cruise missiles and drones have forced Russia's Black Sea Fleet to move from their home port in Crimea.

However, the Russian leader has shown he is in it for the long haul, approving last week a $410 billion budget for 2024 that includes a 70 percent rise in defense spending.

It shows that sanctions imposed on Russia have not deterred Putin's war machine, with IMF forecasting that the country's economy will grow by 1.1 percent in 2024 as Moscow has circumvented the $60 price cap on oil aimed at hurting its energy revenues.

"Western decision-making never took into account that the Russian government's pain threshold is higher than (that of) Western governments," said Vuksanovic.