WHAT NEXT FOR UKRAINE AFTER TWO YEARS OF WAR WITH RUSSIA?

Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag still flutters in western capitals, but after two years of war with Russia, an ally’s roof is not where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would most have wanted to see it.

“Blue and yellow colours will be all over our south and all over our east,” Mr Zelenskyy pledged, as his troops began a counter-offensive against Russia’s invaders last spring.

It has not quite turned out like that – even if it took Kyiv’s allies, who had thrown some of their best weaponry into the fray in the hope of sweeping Ukrainian gains, a while to admit it. Nato officials were speaking of “good progress” in the counter-offensive over the summer. By autumn, it was “slow and steady”. By winter it had gained “less ground than was hoped”.

What happens next will depend on how fast Ukraine and Russia can replenish their arsenals, how much Israel's war on Gaza stretches the world's resources and whether Donald Trump succeeds in his bid to return to the White House.

There was anger in Mr Zelenskyy’s inner circle when his top general, Valery Zaluzhnyi, first breathed the word “stalemate” in public. But in dismissing Gen Zaluzhnyi in a reshuffle this month, even Mr Zelenskyy had to admit a “feeling of stagnation” has taken hold in Ukraine’s war effort.

The split between the “iron general” and the actor-president, who rallied the West to his cause, does not mean Russia is suddenly having a good time in a war it started.

Heavy Russian losses include 3,000 tanks, as many as were in its whole army before the invasion of Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to turn to creaking old Soviet gear to refill stocks.

Ukraine’s military has prospered in what analysts call the “deep battle”, launching long-range strikes to inflict severe wounds on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

A member of Ukraine's coastguard mans a gun on a patrol boat as a cargo ship passes by in the Black Sea in February 2024. Reuters

A member of Ukraine's coastguard mans a gun on a patrol boat as a cargo ship passes by in the Black Sea in February 2024. Reuters

Still, one estimate is that Russia could sustain its losses for two to three more years – while Ukraine relies on the West’s deep pockets to replenish its arsenal. But the West's stamina has already come under question.

After surviving an aborted coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin is up for re-election in March. Nobody seriously doubts he will win a stage-managed poll – but how America votes in November could prove far more decisive.

“There’s a strong body of logic that says Russia’s best bet for a successful outcome hinges on the US presidential election more than the Russian election,” said Henry Boyd of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Without the current level of resourcing both from the United States and the European partners, you’re going to hinder Ukraine’s ability to operate as it’s currently doing.”

The President and the political war

Mr Zelenskyy’s skills as a showman are undiminished, with his olive-green sweatshirts a part of the war’s iconography along with long Kremlin tables and the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

Relentless and emotive appeals to allies to arm Ukraine in its hour of need brought his generals the top-of-the-range battle tanks and rocket launchers they craved.

While Mr Putin, granted a US audience by Tucker Carlson, launched into a half-hour history lecture on Prince Rurik and Yaroslav the Wise, Mr Zelenskyy is adept at pushing the right buttons.

“His appearance at many international forums, firstly by video link, but increasingly in person, has given him enormous stature,” said retired British Army brigadier Ben Barry.

Still, the circle of allies is not as large as Ukraine would like and the US-led narrative “is not supported by the Global South, who see the war as avoidable,” Brig Barry said.

“They've been paying the price in terms of increased prices of food and energy and it’s not clear how Zelenskyy can address that.”

Before the war in the Gaza Strip, there was talk that Israel might lend its sophisticated missile and air defences to Ukraine, after its enemy Iran contributed drones to Russia.

That is now out of the question as Israel wages a war in the Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas militant group’s October 7 attack, a crisis that has also left Ukraine’s western allies with their hands full.

Aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s biggest warship, was diverted from the Nato theatre to the Middle East after war broke out in Gaza, with the Pentagon also sending arms to Israel.

“It may not be the case that they have had shells that were earmarked for Ukraine that then went to Israel, but obviously you’re drawing from a similar pool for both sources,” Mr Boyd said.

“Every artillery shell that goes to Israel is one less that you have available to supply to Ukraine, should you wish to do so.”

A hard-won $54 billion in EU aid gave Ukraine a recent boost, but Europe’s armouries were not prepared for such a full-scale conflict on their doorstep and the bloc has failed to deliver a million 155mm artillery shells as pledged.

Britain continues to provide arms such as Storm Shadow cruise missiles, while its rhetoric that Ukraine can prevail over Russia gives Kyiv an important morale boost, said Orysia Lutsevych of the Chatham House think tank.

“Few people actually say this clearly as [UK Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak did for example in Kyiv, and that matters enormously,” she said.

As Mr Trump’s gravitational pull on US politics erodes consensus on arming Ukraine in Washington, Kyiv is again making the case that the faster it can strike a decisive blow against Russia, the sooner the war will be over.

“Putin’s watching with great pleasure what's happening in America,” said Ms Lutsevych.

The US debate “has played out in Putin’s favour and his next step is to hope Trump will come into power and further undermine America’s role as the security provider for Europe”, she said.

Timeline

The general on the battlefield

When Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, many feared Ukraine’s military would be overwhelmed.

It was a time for leadership. Disregarding the rigid Soviet doctrine of top-down command, commander-in-chief Gen Zaluzhny led by giving his men on the front line the initiative to make their own decisions.

In the summer of 2022, he led a counter-attack that reversed 50 per cent of Russia’s gains, reaffirming the West’s belief that Kyiv had the grit to succeed against Moscow.

With German-made Leopard tanks and American Himars precision missiles, it appeared Gen Zaluzhny had everything in place to slice through Russian defences last summer.

But instead, without the air superiority that was a given for any Nato country, his newly trained brigades were blunted by the long lines of Russian minefields, fortifications and artillery-driven counterattacks.

Nonetheless, the last two years of fighting could well become what experts call a “revolution in military affairs”, largely defined by Ukraine’s actions.

Without a large warship, it has sunk at least 15 Russian ones and damaged 12 more, driving the Black Sea fleet out of Sevastopol in Crimea to hide in ports more than 600km away.

Ukraine’s use of suicide attack drones has led to entire Russian columns being wiped out as they struggle to mount attacks.

A Ukrainian soldier prepares a Vampire drone for flight in Zaporizhzhia, in February 2024. Reuters

A Ukrainian soldier prepares a Vampire drone for flight in Zaporizhzhia, in February 2024. Reuters

Even infantry in dug-outs are not safe from a quadcopter carrying a rocket-propelled grenade warhead, sweeping through the opening and detonating inside with deadly effect.

“Ukrainians have changed the character of naval warfare, through the use of Storm Shadow, maritime drones, special forces and sabotage, and have still managed to keep the grain shipments going,” said former US general Ben Hodges.

“People are still thinking in a very linear, traditional way, that the only way to win is by armoured attacks but, instead, Ukraine is showing what they can do by being the ultimate in asymmetric warfare, exploiting technology and adaptive innovation.”

Despite Kremlin loyalists being at war with Ukraine for a decade, Russia has still failed to establish air superiority or put the war beyond Kyiv’s forces.

Estimates of Russia’s death toll vary between 40,000 and 130,000, but it is clear Moscow has lost a “staggering amount of troops”, said Gen Hodges, the former head of US forces in Europe.

Russia is fighting “with every single advantage” but still only controls only 18 per cent of Ukraine, he said, and has never been able to halt supply lines of ammunition and equipment from Poland.

“That's job two for the air force and they have not been able to destroy a single train or convoy,” said Gen Hodges. “That's incredible.”

Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities with missiles and Iranian drones has lacked the severe punch of last winter and it has had to sacrifice on quality to replace its battle tanks.

Both sides also face difficult choices about their manpower, with Ukraine’s leadership trying to minimise losses among its youths and talking about how it can use technology to reduce casualties.

Before his dismissal, Gen Zaluzhny had publicised what he wanted for the next stage of war: F-16 fighters to win air superiority, plentiful shells to establish artillery dominance, lots of electronic warfare kit, many more drones, mine-breaching equipment and increased training of Ukraine’s reserve forces.

Long-range American ATACMS missiles, used by Ukraine for the first time last autumn to strike targets with high precision from a distance of 300km, could also put Russian headquarters under pressure and tilt the bitter fighting Kyiv’s way.

“I have got friends fighting in the east who said it’s really hardcore,” a military source in Ukraine said.

“The best way to describe it would be to imagine a rugby scrum. Everyone thinks its stalemate but it's actually not. It’s just that the scrum is going to collapse [and] it’s just a question on which side.”

The global impact

As hopes faded of a decisive Ukrainian breakthrough on the front line, its allies looked to the bigger picture for more optimistic narratives.

Ukraine “has been an inspiration for the world’s free peoples”, said top US general Mark Milley.

Russia has few friends left and Mr Putin is wanted in The Hague, said Gen Milley's British counterpart Tony Radakin, who said “territory is not the only measure of how this war progresses”.

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell had Ukraine’s rebounding grain exports in mind when he upbraided journalists for “focusing on the military counter-offensive” rather than developments in the Black Sea.

It was the world’s bad luck that Ukraine’s besieged land happens to be some of the world’s most fertile and its heavily mined coast a key gateway for food supplies.

Lebanon and Afghanistan were among the hard-up countries reliant on Ukrainian grain and prices rocketed as Black Sea trade slowed. A deal on safe passage brokered by Turkey was scuppered by Moscow last year.

A Ukrainian officer inspects a destroyed grain warehouse in Kherson Oblast in May 2022. Getty Images

A Ukrainian officer inspects a destroyed grain warehouse in Kherson Oblast in May 2022. Getty Images

Richard King, research director for Chatham House’s food and climate policy unit, said food prices were “as high as they've ever been” shortly after the invasion.

Food insecurity heightened in the Mena region, having stabilised after the Covid-19 pandemic, said Mr King.

“I certainly think that it’s fair to say that the war in Ukraine was an entry factor to that,” Mr King said. “And there is now an estimate that by 2030, 120 million more people are projected as being food insecure.”

But with Ukrainian naval gains have come falling insurance costs and a greater willingness by shipowners to return to the Black Sea, hugging the Romanian coast and boosting Ukraine’s wartime economy.

Ukraine is forecast to export all of its grain harvest for 2023 and 2024 after more than 600 ships sailed through the new Black Sea corridor, although the crisis further south in the Red Sea is damaging trade.

Farmers harvest a wheat field near Bila Tservka in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, in August 2023. Getty Images

Farmers harvest a wheat field near Bila Tservka in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, in August 2023. Getty Images

At the same time, the original UN deal “can take a lot of credit” for a swift reduction in prices and “the key issue is to get that Black Sea grain initiative up and running again, or its successor”, Mr King said.

Russia has boasted that its wartime economy is booming despite the West’s attempt to throttle it with sanctions, although declining oil revenue and limited wage growth leave a mixed picture overall.

While Russia’s middle class has less spending power, a “breaking point induced by structural economic issues may take years to arrive”, the EU’s in-house security analysts concede in a recent report.

The money pouring into the state-controlled arms industry puts pressure on Mr Zelenskyy and the West to respond, even in difficult economic times, by building up complex military supply chains.

“This is not making Playmobil toys,” said Robert Wall, editor of the the International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual survey of global military might known as The Military Balance.

“Even artillery shells, which we think of maybe as old-style technology, require chemicals, [they] require precise engineering, so it just takes time and demand has only gone up.”

The people

The war’s human impact has spread across Europe’s borders after millions of Ukrainian women and children sought refuge from Russia’s bombs.

Initially granted one year’s stay, more than 4.2 million Ukrainians were still sheltering in EU countries as the second anniversary approached, with Germany and Poland the main hosts.

Elena Tomash, 47, fled her home in Kyiv with her two sons two days after Russia invaded.

Despite the gathering war clouds, she did not truly believe an invasion was coming until Russian war machine rolled in. Hours later, her advertising company said it could no longer pay salaries.

She recalled as an “apocalyptic scene” during a train journey out of Ukraine. The family spent more than a day crammed into a four-person compartment with 12 other people. They eventually found a visa sponsor in the UK.

“I have not seen my family for two years. My mum is very sick and even now I fear we will never meet again,” she said.

“The people who decided to stay are exhausted, they are mentally drained.”

A few went the other way – fighters who signed up to a Ukrainian foreign legion.

Shareef Amin, a British veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was ambushed in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s front line and airlifted home with bullet and shrapnel wounds, but has returned as part of a medical response team.

After being shot three times, leaving both lungs punctured, and having his arm tangled in shrapnel and 20 pieces of metal in his back, he accepts his days of storming trenches are over but he wants to help the best he can.

“Nothing can get your mind and head out of what you see,” he said.

“We all see it in movies, like Saving Private Ryan, but when you see a body with no arms and no head and you are helping to put it on a truck or you see someone evaporated, it is shocking.”

Even recovering away from the front line, he describes “rockets over my head, drones running around the city … it was right above my head and I could hear guns … boom, boom”.

“Everyone is asleep, there are no soldiers here and it is just madness.”

A woman walks among the graves of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war, in Lviv, in February 2023. Getty Images

A woman walks among the graves of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war, in Lviv, in February 2023. Getty Images

Moscow stands accused of deporting displaced children to mainland Russia, and even trying to indoctrinate them with Russian language and culture.

While there are efforts to bring them home, such as a Qatar-brokered deal to return four children from Moscow, some refugees wonder if they will ever go back to a country with an estimated $486 billion of reconstruction costs.

“I am realistic, I understand that if the war ends tomorrow or in two months it will take at least 10 years or even 20 to refresh the economy and rebuild the education system,” said Ms Tomash, meaning she could be retired by then.

“I think one day my son will move back but not me.”