Ukrainians prepare for a long war as Western aid stalls

Darkening outlook contrasts starkly with Kyiv’s buoyant mood a year ago after gains

KYIV - Mr Oleksii Tilnenko hoped this would be the year Ukraine drove Russian forces out of swathes of occupied land. As 2023 draws to a close, his southern home town of Kherson is still being pounded by shelling and the front line has barely budged.

Mr Tilnenko, who fled Kherson in 2022 and lives in Kyiv where he helps internally displaced people, believes Russia is racing to rebuild its much larger armed forces to step up its war effort.

"The hope is the West can somehow mobilise, somehow fire up its defence industry to renew equipment and produce what's needed to defend our ordinary citizens," said the 36-year-old.

More than 21 months into the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, fighting rages with no end in sight, and neither side has landed a telling blow on the battlefield.

Ukrainian soldiers, living in freezing trenches, acknowledge they are exhausted going into a second winter of full-scale war with a resource-rich, nuclear-armed superpower that has more than triple Ukraine's population.

Ukrainians know they must secure Western military aid to carry on - and that it will be harder with the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza distracting global attention.