One measure of Ukraine's declining prosperity is Russia's advance in the east, especially around the city of Pokrovsk. So far it's been slow and expensive. Recent estimates of Russian losses are around 1,200 killed and wounded per day, in addition to the total of 500,000. But Ukraine, with a fifth as many inhabitants as Russia, is also suffering. The lines could crumble before the Russian war effort is exhausted.
Ukraine is also struggling beyond the battlefield. Russia has destroyed so much of its electricity grid that Ukrainians face a freezing winter with daily power outages of up to 16 hours. People are tired of war. The army is struggling to mobilize and train enough troops to hold the line, let alone recapture territory. There is a widening gap between the total victory that many Ukrainians say they want and their willingness or ability to fight for it.
Abroad, fatigue sets in. The hard right in Germany and France claim that supporting Ukraine is a waste of money. Donald Trump could well become president of the United States. He is capable of anything, but his words show that he wants to sell out Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If Mr. Zelenskiy continues to defy reality by insisting that the Ukrainian military can take back all the land that Russia has stolen since 2014, he will drive out Ukraine's supporters and further divide Ukrainian society. Whether or not Trump wins in November, the only hope to maintain American and European support and unite Ukrainians is a new approach that starts with leaders who honestly say what victory means.
As The Economist has long argued, Putin did not attack Ukraine for its territory, but to prevent the country from becoming a prosperous, Western-oriented democracy. Ukraine's partners must get Mr Zelensky to convince his people that this remains the main prize in this war. As much as Mr. Zelensky wants to drive Russia out of all of Ukraine, including Crimea, he does not have the men or the weapons to do so. Neither he nor the West should recognize Russia's false claim to the occupied territories; rather, they should maintain reunification as an aspiration.
In return for Zelensky embracing this grim truth, Western leaders must lend credence to his overriding war goal by ensuring that Ukraine has the military capacity and security guarantees it needs. If Ukraine can convincingly deny Russia any prospect of further progress on the battlefield, it will be able to demonstrate the futility of further major offensives. Whether or not a formal peace agreement is signed, that is the only way to end the fighting and guarantee the security on which Ukraine's prosperity and democracy will ultimately rest.
This will require larger supplies of the weapons Zelensky is asking for. Ukraine needs long-range missiles that can hit military targets deep inside Russia, and air defenses to protect its infrastructure. Crucially, the country must also make its own weapons. Today, the country's arms industry has orders worth $7 billion, only about a third of its potential capacity. Arms companies from America and some European countries have intervened; others should do so too. The supply of homemade weapons is more reliable and cheaper than Western-made ones. It can also be more innovative. Ukraine has about 250 drone companies, some of them world leaders, including makers of long-range machines that may have been behind a recent attack on a huge weapons dump in Russia's Tver province.
The second way to make Ukrainian defense credible is to say that Ukraine should now be invited to join NATO, even though it is divided and possibly without a formal ceasefire. Biden is known to be cautious about this. Such a statement from him, backed by leaders in Britain, France and Germany, would go far beyond today's open talk about an “irrevocable path” to membership.
This would be controversial because NATO members are expected to support each other if one of them is attacked. In opening a debate on this Article 5 guarantee, Mr Biden was able to make clear that it would not cover the Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies today, as was the case with East Germany when West Germany joined in 1955 NATO; and that Ukraine would not necessarily garrison foreign NATO troops in peacetime, as it did in Norway in 1949.
NATO membership entails risks. If Russia were to attack Ukraine again, America could face a terrible dilemma: supporting Ukraine and risking war with a nuclear enemy; or refuse and weaken its alliances around the world. However, giving up Ukraine would also weaken all US alliances – one of the reasons why China, Iran and North Korea support Russia. Mr Putin is clear that he sees the real enemy as the West. It is an illusion to think that leaving defeat in Ukraine will bring peace.
A dysfunctional Ukraine could itself become a dangerous neighbor. Corruption and nationalism are already increasing. If Ukrainians feel betrayed, Putin could radicalize battle-hardened militias against the West and NATO. He accomplished something similar in the Donbas, where after 2014 he turned a number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians into partisans ready to go to war against their compatriots.
For too long, the West has hidden behind the pretext that if Ukraine set the goals, it would decide which weapons to supply. Yet Mr. Zelensky cannot define victory without knowing the level of Western support. In contrast, the plan outlined above is self-reinforcing. A firmer pledge of NATO membership would help Zelensky redefine victory; a credible war objective would deter Russia; NATO would benefit from Ukraine's revitalized arms industry. Forging a new victory plan will ask a lot of Mr. Zelensky and Western leaders. But if they protest, they will herald Ukraine's defeat. And that would be much worse.
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
