Ukrainian artillery shells Russian positions. Photo: Global Images Ukraine
Ukraine will face defeat as early as next summer if US and NATO military assistance is provided. is drying up, a senior US official warned.
Vladimir Putin's chances of victory are increasing due to war fatigue and funding blockages in both America and the EU.
guarantee of success with us, but without us they will surely fail,” a senior US military source told CNN.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, last week blocked a £43 billion EU aid package for Ukraine.
Austria has also threatened to block the bill until Kiev softens criticism of an Austrian bank still operating in Russia.
Western planners working on 'worst-case scenario'
In the US, the Senate backs a military support bill Ukraine to the tune of £48 billion, and polls have shown that a majority of Americans believe the US government is overspending in Ukraine.
Western military strategists are now working on a «worst-case scenario» of an unaided Ukraine being defeated by Russia within months, according to a CNN report, which the source called a «catastrophe» for European security.
«I don't think so.» that people fully understand what the fall of Ukraine will actually mean. We will see terrible things: ethnic cleansing and the complete destruction of Ukraine,” CNN quotes the words of an unnamed European diplomat.
Vladimir Zelensky visits graves of Ukrainian soldiers in Lviv last Friday. Photo: AFP/Getty
As support wanes, Vladimir Zelensky is touring Western capitals and Joe Biden has warned that disinterest in Ukraine risks giving Putin an early «Christmas present.»
However, Ukraine is already running low on weapons and equipment, and analysts estimate that Kiev will soon run out of air defense missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and man-portable missiles if Western aid stops.
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The EU has also admitted that it is only able to supply Ukraine with about a third of the artillery shells originally promised.
Reports from the front lines about ammunition rationing have also become more frequent.
Around Avdiivka, the center of Russian attacks in the eastern Donbass, Ukrainian Soviet-designed transport helicopters, converted to carry air-to-surface missiles, are deployed only if Russian troops attack using vehicles.
p> Counter-offensive, which soon stalled
Infantry attacks remain unimpeded due to lack of supplies.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in May, but it soon stalled, facing stronger-than-expected Russian trenches and densely planted minefields.
Ukrainian troops, having regained positions from Russia and entrenched themselves in the villages of Robotino in the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine and Krynki on the left bank of the Dnieper, 20 miles upstream from the city of Kherson, found themselves surrounded and fired upon by artillery. .
The New York Times interviewed Ukrainian marines, some of whom were trained by the British military, who have spent the last couple of months trying to take control of Krynki, a cluster of fishermen's cottages.
Ukrainian servicemen in tears at the funeral of a comrade in Kiev last Friday Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
They described it as a “suicide mission” carried out in a hellscape of flooded shell craters filled with corpses, rather than the decisive foothold that Ukrainian military officials had spoken of.
“The left bank was like purgatory. You’re not dead yet, but you don’t feel alive,” a wounded soldier said from a hospital.
Putin calls Ukraine a “satellite state of the United States.”
Putin has increasingly boasted about Russia’s prospects of outmaneuvering and outmaneuvering Russia. with the West on his mind, and during his annual call with the Russian public on Thursday he said he had retained his original military goal of forcing Ukraine to capitulate.
On Sunday he also launched his campaign for the March presidential election. ridiculing Ukraine for becoming a US satellite state «in exchange for sausage».
Stephen Hall, associate professor of Russian politics at the University of Bath, said Putin was at the forefront and the West had no no choice but to continue supporting Ukraine.
“If his military goals don't change, that means one thing,” he said. “Russian armed forces will have to reach Kyiv.”
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