KYIV — Coming to Kyiv from the United States is a bracing experience. Russia’s war with Ukraine has become a familiar part of the political debate in America. Democrats promise to stand with Ukraine; former president Donald Trump declares that he could end the war in a day. But it all has an air of abstraction, an ongoing conversation that could easily keep on going. But in Ukraine, the mood is raw, tense and urgent. This is a different city than the one I visited around this time in 2022 and 2023. The situation in Ukraine is critical, and the next few months might well determine the outcome of this war.
Attending the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv, I’ve always found the city surprisingly normal, with a prevailing feeling of safety. No longer. The number of Russian aerial attacks has gone up substantially. Few missiles get through, but the psychological effect is intense. The night before I arrived, dozens of air-raid sirens pierced the night, and residents said they could hear the booms — mostly not of missiles but of antimissile batteries.
More wearing on the population than the threat of missiles is the reality of power outages. Russia has been attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with brutal persistence and, alas, considerable success. It has used Iranian-developed Shahed drones and recently received a shipment of Iranian ballistic missiles, which could be unleashed on Ukraine’s power grid in the next few weeks. Even Kyiv regularly experiences power outages, often lasting hours. Sources in Ukraine’s government tell me that these blackouts have made work and life so difficult that there has been a fresh exodus of people leaving the country.
I don’t want to exaggerate or paint too gloomy a picture. Kyiv remains a bustling, lively, beautiful city. The streets and parks are filled with people going to work, shopping or just walking hand in hand. But everywhere there are reminders of the war’s current phase. Billboards urge Ukrainians to sign up for the armed forces. Construction crews work to rebuild what the Russians have destroyed. And captured Russian tanks are proudly displayed in Saint Michael’s Square.
Just over a month ago, Ukrainian forces surprised the world by moving into Russia and capturing hundreds of square miles of its Kursk region. This was a huge morale boost for the Ukrainians, soldiers and civilians, who desperately needed it. But now the realization has set in that the incursion has not dramatically changed the basic dynamics of the war. In fact, many now question whether it was a mistake. By diverting some of Ukraine’s best troops to the mission, did the government leave exposed key areas of the 750-mile front inside Ukraine where Russia is now poised to make gains? Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Russian forces are advancing toward the city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistical center. If it were to fall, Russia would come closer to its goal of taking the entire Donbas, which would be a brutal blow to Ukrainian morale and would substantially change the reality on the ground. It would return to a situation like that in February and March of 2022, when Russian forces were steadily advancing through the east and south of Ukraine.
On Thursday, Russia struck a cargo ship in open water for the first time since the invasion, attacking a ship in the Black Sea carrying grain from Ukraine to Egypt. If commercial vessels begin to shy away from the Black Sea, it would reverse one of Ukraine’s greatest achievements during this war — maintaining the ability to ship its grain and other exports at high levels. The economic element of the war does not get enough attention, but Ukraine needs whatever cash it can get. Its struggling arms industry, for example, requires more investment to compete with Russia, which produces weapons on a near-continuous basis.
The greatest fear in Ukraine, however, which I heard often and from many people, both in government and on the streets, is about the West’s resolve — in particular, of the United States. One Ukrainian told me: “We will never become a Russian colony. We will keep fighting, but we worry that we will be fighting alone.” The delay in American aid during the past year, caused by infighting among stubborn Republicans in Congress, has contributed to the deterioration of the situation on the ground, and many now fear what will happen if Trump wins in November.
“This war is a struggle of will,” Kersti Kaljulaid, the former president of Estonia, told me. “Putin is in it to win, and he has transformed his economy into a war machine, spending something like 7 or 8 percent of GDP on his war of aggression. The West is spending roughly 0.2 percent of its GDP helping Ukraine defend itself. If we could even double that figure, we could bankrupt Putin.”
The discussion in the West needs to move from airy abstractions to urgent reality. Ukraine needs help on all fronts — economic, political and military — and it needs that help now. The Biden administration should recognize the possibility that the next four months of aid to Ukraine could be the last major American help for that country and act accordingly. Better to hope for the best and plan for the worst.
