IN A FIELD somewhere in Kyiv, a group of patriotic teenagers are practising military drills under the watch of army instructors. The youngest is 14. They come here four or five times a week after homework, and earnestly say they are ready to step in for the fallen. “Our guys are not infinite. Someone has to replace them,” says 18-year-old Danylo, his emerald eyes framed by a khaki balaclava.
Across town, a 28-year-old is staring at the walls of his safehouse, in lockdown and digital silence since escaping conscription in February. At the start of the war Ivan raised money for the army. Now, pallid from lack of sunlight, he rejects the idea of an independent Ukraine itself. He is one of an estimated 300,000 Ukrainian men absent without leave.
The two scenes are close enough to share the same Kyiv postcode. But they describe two different wars: one where Ukraine is starting to get an advantage over Russia, and one where it is still struggling. The front line is stabilising, Europe is delivering cash, and the country is carving out a role as a defence power, producing drone technology the world needs. Volodymyr Zelensky is leaning into the idea of a longer war, as confidence grows that Russia, with its burning refineries, stalling economy and grumbling elites, is growing more unstable.
Ukraine has achieved something extraordinary simply by remaining sovereign. But survival alone is not victory. Serious questions remain about its reserves of men and resources—and about what type of country can emerge from this war with no end in sight.
The war Ukraine is winning
By every conventional metric, Ukraine should already have lost. It is stymying an adversary with 4.5 times its population, 28 times its land mass and an economy 12 times bigger than its own. That has required military, social, economic and occasionally political ingenuity.
News from the front line is the most promising in years. The fighting is bitter, but Ukraine’s commanders believe their drone-led forces have found a formula to thwart Vladimir Putin’s ground offensive. For several months they have knocked troops out of action faster than the Kremlin can replace them. Russia has cut the length of training for its supposedly elite airborne units to just ten days. Ukraine is killing or seriously wounding an average of 35,000 Russian soldiers a month. The target is 50,000—the ceiling of Russia’s training capacity and the point, the Ukrainians hope, at which Mr Putin’s arithmetic breaks.
Russia keeps hurling bodies into the furnace, but with less and less to show for it. It is at least two years behind already scaled-back timetables for taking the rest of Donbas, Mr Putin’s key political aim. Brigadier General Pavlo Palisa, a Ukrainian presidential aide, says the Kremlin has again ordered its army to reach the Donbas provinces’ administrative borders, this time by autumn. He rubbishes the prospect. “Not everything on the battlefield can be counted in numbers. We have the edge in professionalism, speed, technology and morale.”
The growing effectiveness of Ukraine’s extended-range drone campaigns is crucial. Mid-range strikes are wreaking havoc on Russian supply lines; long-range ones are hitting strategic targets, from oil facilities to arms factories, sometimes more than a thousand kilometres inside Russia. America continues to supply critical intelligence, despite the countries’ tense relationship. But perhaps 95% of the long-range systems are designed and built by Ukraine’s own burgeoning defence industry. The army is reaping the rewards: surging production, a pipeline of better weapons and a methodical campaign to destroy Russian radar and air defences, which cannot be quickly replaced.
Yevhen Karas, commander of the 413th Regiment, says reaching such targets is now “three times easier” than it was. His unit has led several important operations, including strikes in March on Silicon El, a microchip maker for Russian ballistic missiles. He predicts a Russian air-defence crisis by autumn. By then Ukraine’s home-grown ballistics production should be in full swing, causing fear and embarrassment deep inside Russia. “The war is no bed of roses for Ukraine, but it’s going much worse for Russia, and it will get harder still.”
In Europe, meanwhile, political elites increasingly realise that their security is tied to Ukrainian resilience, at least until their own armed forces are in better shape. That should guarantee macroeconomic support for the foreseeable future. Viktor Orban can no longer obstruct EU assistance, having lost Hungary’s election in April, and a long-promised €90bn in aid is about to flow. It comes just in time: the government had been writing IOUs to some of its workers.
The cost of war
For all the promise of these developments, a war fought mostly on Ukrainian soil has hollowed out the rear. Critical infrastructure is fraying. Air defences, especially anti-ballistic, are dangerously thin. A huge missile and drone strike on Kyiv on the night of May 23rd resulted in at least 40 locations being hit. Russian first-person-view drones are undermining civilian life in cities near the front lines, such as Kherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv.
This winter the capital came close to a full blackout; in February the system was just one targeted strike from collapse, insiders say. The lights stayed on thanks to the courage of emergency workers. The economy, boosted by the growing defence sector, performed as well as it could given the headwinds. (Ukraine’s labour force, for example, has dropped from 17m before the war to about 12m.) But the blackouts lowered GDP growth by an estimated 2.5 percentage points this year. It is now forecast at 1.5%.
Taras Chmut, a civil-society activist and sometime adviser to the defence ministry, says he now worries more about energy than the front line. People are tired, but morale is not breaking. Failure to adequately prepare for the upcoming year could test that. “Wars aren’t fought by armies, but by societies. If the belief in our ability to withstand the war breaks down, so too will the will to fight,” Mr Chmut says. An unpublished survey of Ukrainian public sentiment, commissioned by an American NGO, found society fracturing into three camps: the patriots (46%), the sceptical moderates (36%) and the demotivated (18%). Tellingly, the main demotivating factors are not trauma or exhaustion but elite corruption and distrust of institutions.
Perceived injustices in conscription are hitting a nerve. The army’s shortage of soldiers is less acute than before, and it has largely met its recruitment targets over the past year. On the modern battlefield, only a tiny fraction of soldiers are ever in contact with the enemy; half a dozen men can hold a 5km strip. But for the unlucky few posted deep in the kill zone, it is often a one-way trip. Fear of such deployments, sometimes used to punish those caught AWOL, has corroded the will to serve.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, is pushing higher front-line pay and international recruitment to attract more volunteers. For now, forced conscription is the norm, much of it violent. Ivan, the fugitive from conscription, was bundled into a van after a chase through Kyiv’s back alleys. Like an estimated 30% of new conscripts, he absconded during training, in his case after paying a $10,000 bribe. He rarely leaves his flat now, and never without a can of pepper spray. In Odessa and Dnipro, where draft campaigns have been harshest, a significant share of conscription-age men have gone into hiding.
Internal politics pose a considerable risk to the country’s prospects. Early in the war national unity was almost complete, at least in public. Since then wartime pressures and corruption scandals have reopened divisions; one involved some $100m and implicated members of the president’s circle. The scandals prompted the first real protests of the war and last November forced the resignation of Mr Zelensky’s powerful number two, Andriy Yermak. He was formally named as a suspect in May. The mood is feverish, like a campaign season without the release valve of elections: a proper vote would be impossible during wartime, though Mr Zelensky keeps planning one.
For all the president’s courage and diplomatic agility, he is thin-skinned. Rather than embrace a government of all talents, insiders say, he has drifted into an increasingly detached, Byzantine style of rule. His office controls much of the media landscape, including anonymous social-media accounts used to smear opponents. Anti-corruption investigators have been sabotaged with counter-prosecutions. Vasyl Maliuk, the former domestic intelligence chief, was demoted after refusing to help harass them. Kyrylo Budanov, the powerful military intelligence chief and an opponent of Mr Yermak, was sidelined with a “promotion” to head of the presidential office. “Zelensky doesn’t tolerate strong people,” complains a senior intelligence officer. “He has built a cult of loyalty around himself.”
War without end
For a short period early this year, American-brokered peace talks looked like they might lead to an uneasy deal in which Ukraine walked back from parts of Donbas in exchange for dubious security guarantees. Mr Putin never approved a concrete proposal, and the idea is no longer under serious consideration. On May 22nd America said it was ending its role in talks. Optimistic insiders think dealmaking could resume this summer. More likely, the fighting will continue until Ukraine or Russia cracks.
Russia’s breaking point is unknowable. Some weaknesses are visible: growing dissent and a stagnating economy, weighed down by sanctions and Ukrainian strikes. The state budget has been rescued by the Iran war; higher oil prices will bring in an unexpected $60bn over 2026. But it is unclear how long that can last. “We’ve become quite similar, though our risks are different,” says a Ukrainian diplomat. He draws a parallel to the collapse of Germany in 1918 after its promising spring offensive. “Who collapses first, or what if neither of us does? That’s something no one can tell you right now.”Government sources say Mr Zelensky has ordered preparations for another two to three years of war. There is no persuasive reason why Ukraine cannot keep fighting that long. It will survive, though tarnished by militarism and wartime corruption. For some Ukrainians that is not enough. “What are we fighting for”, asks Ivan, “if we are no better than Russia, just packing people into vans?”
Yet most are more optimistic. Ukraine will probably emerge as a damaged but functioning democracy and a new middle power: poorer, traumatised, but confident in its identity. “As crappy as things look, we’ll make it work,” says the senior intelligence source. “I have this strange sense, this confidence, that, I don’t know, God loves Ukraine.”
