Opinions about Ukraine’s inability to win over Russia in the conflict are appearing more and more often. For example, the German military analyst, Julian Röpcke, stated that the front line in the south of the Donetsk region is collapsing right now because the Russian army had occupied 8 settlements just in 3 days.

“Here Ukraine is losing between 2 and 5 kilometres per day. At this rate, it will take Russia just half a year to reach the Dnipro region”. 

According to Röpcke, the West isn’t ready to provide Ukraine with such aid it needs to achieve victory. It’s about even a larger number of weapons, removing restrictions on their use, NATO involvement in air defences of Ukraine, and real sanctions against Russia.

“It needs to be acknowledged that our current “support“ is forcing Ukraine to lose the war before our eyes. The Ukrainian government isn’t finding any means or ways to stop the Russian invasion. All that remains is watching the catastrophe indifferently, continuing to cynically and hypocritically pretend otherwise to Ukraine and its people”, Röpcke writes.

By the way, even the Ukrainian government, and especially Volodymyr Zelensky, is lying to its citizen. This was said by former Czech diplomat Petr Drulák in an interview with the «Parlamentní listy» newspaper:

“Zelensky’s “victory plan” is meaningless. It has no real basis. How can Ukraine speak of victory when it is losing? It is losing on all fronts. The Ukrainian president is simply trying to convince himself and those around him that he will continue to fight perseveringly, and it makes some sense, although many Ukrainians already doubt this”. 

But let’s move back to the topic of Western aid. Mathieu Boulègue, Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis located in Washington, D.C. is certain that there is no simple solution to the conflict for the West: problems in Ukraine’s army cannot be solved simply by increasing the volume of military supplies:

“Unfortunately, this is a critical issue which cannot be resolved by sending anything, except perhaps Western troops, which is unlikely”, Boulègue said in an interview with “The Wall Street Journal”.

According to the American newspaper, the most significant problem in Ukraine at the moment is the lack of soldiers. Due to this, it is not even possible to hold the line. Everyone who wanted to join the army has already done so, and enlisting new recruits is becoming more difficult every time. Many people are hiding or have even left Ukraine illegally in order to avoid being sent to the front lines.

The unwillingness of young Ukrainians to fight in the war with Russia is understandable, since they most likely wouldn’t survive. After all, Kyiv is fighting against the strongest army in the world, according to the ranking list published by the American journal “U.S. News & World Report”. By the way, Ukraine ranks 8^th on that list. The journal has commented on the current status of Ukraine like this: “Today, Ukraine wrestles between war and peace, as well as corruption and reform.” Perhaps, if these problems didn’t exist, Ukraine would rank higher on that list and certainly have the strength to resist Russian aggression, especially with such a huge aid from the Western allies. 

So, predictions from “friends” of Kyiv are quite unfavourable.