Does the US Actually Want Ukraine to Win?

As Kyiv's long-awaited counteroffensive has stalled, murmurings that now would be a good time to end the war with Moscow are growing louder

- DAVID BRENNAN

UKRAINE'S 2023 FIGHTING SEASON IS DRAWING TO a close under a cloud of unmet expectations.

Its soldiers and citizens, who are steeling themselves for a Russian winter blitz, will not be warmed by the memories of summer success, Kyiv's long-awaited counteroffensive operation having failed to achieve the breakthrough needed to collapse Moscow's occupation of the south of the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky and top commander General Valerii Zaluzhnyi have admitted Ukraine's shortcomings. "There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough," Zaluzhnyi said in an interview with The Economist in November.

Zelensky, meanwhile, told citizens that "all attention should be focused on defense." As Kyiv works to maintain its Western coalition, stress fractures are forming. In Europe, a wave of right-wing populism threatens to derail the continent's political establishment, while in the U.S. President Joe Biden is heading into a fierce reelection contest with a Republican Party cowed by former President Donald Trump and shifting into open Ukraine-skepticism.

A common refrain since February 2022 is that the U.S. is giving Ukraine enough military aid to survive, but not enough to win. In this telling, Washington, D.C., fears that a strategic Kremlin defeat in Ukraine could prompt chaos within Russian borders, perhaps the unseating of President Vladimir Putin, and a vicious regional struggle to fill a power vacuum littered with weapons of mass destruction. With the China challenge looming, Eurasian anarchy would pose many new problems for the White House.

Zelensky appears to be feeling the pinch. "The Ukrainians do see continued hesitancy and this mindset of worrying about escalation, not provoking the Russians in some sort of way," Daniel Vajdich-president of Yorktown Solutions and one of Ukraine's most prominent lobbyists in Washington, D.C. told Newsweek.