If there is not enough help, Kyiv will "begin to lose the war," military expert Michael Kofman told the New York Times.
"The Ukrainians are tired, they don't have enough ammunition, they have a numerical advantage, and their prospects look bleak," the newspaper writes.
"At the moment, we can stop them, but who knows if we will be able to tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine told journalists.
One of the most difficult problems is personnel: "The ranks, thinned by growing losses, are replenished only partially, often at the expense of old and poorly trained recruits."
The publication with reference to the military tells a case of how a man mobilized at the training ground had to be supported by the arms so that he could fire a machine gun. It is reported that the 50-year-old conscript was "crippled by alcoholism."
"Three out of ten soldiers who come are no better than drunks who fell asleep and woke up in uniform," says one of the fighting soldiers.
The second problem is the lack of ammunition. "Russian units are in a similar position until the summer of 2022, where they can simply exhaust Ukrainian positions until Kyiv's forces run out of ammunition," the article reads.
"But unlike that summer, in Western capitals there is no longer a feverish struggle to arm and re-equip the Ukrainian troops," the authors add.
"If our international partners had acted faster, we would have kicked their ass in the first three to four months so much that we would have already overcome it. We would sow the fields, raise the children," said the military man with the call sign Yeger. "We would send bread to Europe. But two years have passed already."
Western cluster shells have also lost their relevance, since the Russians now attack in small groups, and they have made their trenches even deeper and less vulnerable to "cassettes".
Therefore, Washington's proposal for Ukraine to go on the defensive in 2024 "will mean little if there are no ammunition or people in Kyiv."
"Russia's advantage at this stage is not decisive, but the war is not at a stalemate," said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently visited Ukraine. "Depending on what happens this year, in particular with the support of Ukraine from the West, 2024 will most likely have one or two trajectories. Ukraine can regain the upper hand by 2025, or it can start to lose the war without enough help."
