Will Ukraine remain a true priority for the West?
Ukraine is losing on the battlefield—but neither Ukrainians nor their Western partners dare to say it aloud. Despite successful Ukrainian strikes on military targets inside Russia, the fourth year of this brutal war is steadily consuming Ukraine’s territory, economy, and human capital.
The pace of Russian advances has accelerated significantly. In May, Russian forces captured around 450 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory—the largest monthly gain of the year. In June, that record was broken again, with 556 square kilometres seized. With each passing month, Ukraine continues to lose more ground.
“The Ukrainian government emphasises successes in the Sumy region and portrays the recapture of a single village as the failure of a large-scale Russian offensive supposedly involving 50,000 soldiers. However, available imagery suggests a force closer to one-tenth of that number,” wrote military analyst Julian Röpcke. “The ongoing loss of the Donetsk region is barely being addressed—at least not in exchanges with Western partners. The cities of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar have effectively fallen to Russian forces, without this being openly communicated. Russia is now advancing on Kostiantynivka from three directions—a city that was still considered a central supply hub for the entire mid-front as recently as September 2024.”
To sustain the fragile morale of the civilian population and secure continued Western support, Ukrainian authorities continue to rely on victory-driven rhetoric. After all, who wants to back a losing side?
A stinging blow to Ukraine’s future
Yet in just the past two months, Russian troops have entered the Sumy region in the north and pushed into Dnipropetrovsk in the east—making it the 10th out of 25 Ukrainian regions now partially or fully occupied—and, in early July, breached the border in a new section of northeastern Kharkiv.
Ukraine has all but lost the Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and at least nine regions are now subjected to intense daily shelling.
April and May showed the highest number of overall civilian casualties since September last year.
In the first half of 2025, the number of civilian casualties rose by 37%, compared to the first six months of 2024, with at least 968 civilians killed and 4,807 wounded. Civilian casualties in Ukraine remained high in May, with at least 183 civilians killed and 836 injured.
BlackRock confirmed it has paused efforts to secure investors for a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is faltering: inflation has climbed steadily since November and reached 15.9% year‑on‑year in May—a stinging blow to household budgets and one of the reasons many are considering emigrating.
Investor confidence is wobbling too; just last week, BlackRock confirmed it has paused efforts to secure investors for a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund amid growing uncertainty over Ukraine’s future.
Tactical victories with limited strategic value
Ukrainian shelling of oil refineries and military installations deep inside Russia has sparked both jubilation and outrage among politicians and across social media.
Yet these strikes are not much of a game-changer but rather a desperate attempt to slow the relentless Russian bombardment.
They represent tactical victories with limited strategic value—doing little to shift battlefield dynamics or significantly undermine Russia’s ability to advance.
And while Russia’s economy continues to falter, so does Ukraine’s—lacking the vast oil and gas reserves the Kremlin still uses to stay afloat.
President Donald Trump, who came into office promising to end the bloody Russian war in Ukraine, has since distanced himself from the conflict, opting to let both sides fight it out without direct U.S. involvement.
“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”
This is a difficult discussion. The counterpoint espoused by many is that while Ukraine is steadily losing territory, russia is losing proportionately more in men and material which is degrading its force capabilities and thus eventually the momentum will shift. Even for those who scrutinize the minutae of the war every day and try to present a balanced view like ISW, it is not clear which side is winning and which side is losing given that there are so many facets to waging war in addition to the highly visible ground assaults. Personally I subscribe to the theory that if the baseline level of Western support continues to reflect the average of the past 3.5 years, Ukraine, despite its tech innovation in smaller weapons systems, eventually runs out of sufficient resources to achieve a satisfactory resolution of the war. So a key question is whether that "average Western support level" (yes it fluctuates up and down) will ever materially increase to change the course of the war. For every Merz boosting support, there seems to be a MAGA actor intent on reducing support.
https://substack.com/@reeceashdown/note/c-133151320?r=5qrbeg&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action