“Ukraine – Russia”

The Ukrainian president is facing calls for regime change

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western public has been sold the story of a Ukrainian front united in its unwavering commitment to a total military victory over Russia. Over the past few weeks, however, this narrative has started to crumble.

The Biden administration’s persistent failure to provide Ukraine with the military supplies it requires poses a serious danger of gifting victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

From Abrams tanks to F-16 fighters, US President Joe Biden has constantly dithered over providing Ukraine with the equipment upgrades its forces desperately need if they are to succeed in defending themselves against Russian aggression.

Without vital US military support there is a real danger Ukraine could end up losing this war – not immediately but in the longer term.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to spell that out, hoping that he can persuade Congress to pass a $60bn aid package that has stalled amid a row over US border security.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, warned Ukraine is in mortal danger without continuing American support.

Ukraine has released images which appear to show the dead body of a former MP whom it allegedly assassinated in Moscow, in a warning to other Russian collaborators.

Illia Kyva, a pro-Kremlin opposition politician who fled to Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, was shot dead on 6 December by a Ukrainian assassin.

With the Ukraine conflict languishing in stalemate, the possibility that Russian president Vladimir Putin might yet emerge victorious from his ill-judged invasion cannot be ignored, with all the implications such an outcome would have for Europe’s security.

Ukraine’s failure to make a decisive breakthrough in its counter-offensive during the summer has all but silenced the optimistic predictions made by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his senior commanders that victory was within Kyiv’s grasp. Instead, the Ukrainian narrative is in danger of descending into recriminations over the refusal of its Western allies to provide Kyiv with the weaponry required to break the impasse on the battlefield. As the Ukrainian leader remarked in a recent interview, “We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted, I can’t be satisfied.”

The Kremlin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin warned the U.S. that Ukraine will turn into its “second Vietnam,” amid disagreement in Congress over funding for Kyiv.

“Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing more and more resources and people,” Russian foreign intelligence chief Naryshkin said Thursday in a written statement published by his agency’s house journal, the Intelligence Operative.

“Ultimately, the U.S. risks creating a ‘second Vietnam’ for itself, and every new American administration will have to deal with it,” he added.

A German research body that tracks donations to Ukraine says the value of pledges fell almost 90 per cent between Autumn 2022 and 2023, with levels dwindling since this Summer, around the time of Kyiv’s ‘Spring Offensive’.

Kyiv has been through a lot over more than 21 months of war, fighting off the invading Russian army and surviving the regular cruise missile attacks and electricity blackouts that followed.

But the political machinations in the Ukrainian capital in recent weeks nonetheless feel unprecedented.

KYIV — More than 21 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine the mood is turning grim in Kyiv — with tensions between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, spilling into the open.

Last year’s successes, as Ukraine first blunted Russia’s attacks on its capital and then recaptured swaths of territory, have faded into a stalemate along hundreds of kilometers of frontlines as entrenched Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fight bloody battles for advances and retreats measured in meters.

When offered the chance to renew a free trade deal with Ukraine, a country that had no choice but to take on a mountain of debt to finance a bitter fight for self-defence, the Liberals couldn’t help but inject it with progressive nods to social and carbon policies. In the words of critics, the deal is “woke.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted last week that his country’s 2023 counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results,” and that “we have a new phase of war.” Russian strongman Vladimir Putin could have said the exact same thing this time last year after his country was forced to retreat from huge swaths of occupied Ukraine.

So what can we learn from each side’s successes and failures?

Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is falling and he will pay for his mistakes by eventually losing power, the mayor of Kyiv Vladimir Klitschko has said.

In a startling rebuke of Ukraine’s president, Mr Klitschko told two interviewers that he considered Mr Zelensky to be increasingly isolated and autocratic.

“People see who’s effective and who’s not. And there were and still are a lot of expectations. Zelensky is paying for mistakes he has made,” he said in an interview with the Swiss news website 20 Minutes.