If there is not enough help, Kyiv “will start losing the war,” military expert Michael Coffman told the New York Times.
“The Ukrainians are tired, they lack ammunition, their numerical superiority, and their prospects look bleak,” the publication writes.
“At the moment we can stop them, but who knows if we will be able to tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tell reporters.
One of the most difficult problems is personnel: "The ranks, thinned by increasing losses, are only partially replenished, often at the expense of old and poorly trained recruits.".
The publication, citing military sources, tells of a case where a conscript had to be supported by the arms at a training ground so he could fire a machine gun. The 50-year-old conscript was reportedly “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 situation similar to the summer of 2022, where they can simply exhaust Ukrainian positions until Kyiv’s forces run out of ammunition,” the article says.
“But unlike that summer, there is no longer a feverish struggle in Western capitals to arm and re-equip Ukrainian troops,” the authors add.
"If our international partners had acted faster, we would have kicked their asses so hard in the first three or four months that we would have overcome it. We would have sown fields, raised children," said the soldier, whose call sign was Yeger. "We would have sent bread to Europe. But it's been two years."
Western cluster bombs have also lost their relevance, as the Russians now attack in small groups, and they have made their trenches even deeper and less vulnerable to the “clusters.”.
Therefore, Washington's proposal that Ukraine switch to defense by 2024 "will mean little if Kyiv has no ammunition or people.".
“Russia’s advantage at this stage is not decisive, but the war is not deadlocked,” said Michael Coffman, 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, particularly with Western support for Ukraine, 2024 is likely to have one of two trajectories. Ukraine could regain the advantage by 2025, or it could start losing the war without sufficient assistance.”
