Last August, more than two months after Ukraine began its counteroffensive against Russian positions in the east, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked about whether the war was degenerating into a stalemate. Sullivan’s answer: no. “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate,” he said at the time. “We are seeing (Ukraine) continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis.”
Fast-forward to today, and the cautious optimism cited by U.S. officials has largely turned into worry—worry that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled; worry that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be able to squeak out victory from the jaws of defeat; and worry that Kyiv’s backers in the West, principally the United States, will not be able to sustain Ukraine’s war effort for much longer.
The lingering doubt about Ukraine’s future prospects is beginning to creep into the Ukrainian population as well. While much has been made about so-called war fatigue in Western capitals, a similar feeling is percolating in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and the small towns throughout the Donbas. There is a growing sense that the war will only get worse before it gets better, assuming it can get better.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still has sky-high approval ratings compared with his counterparts in the U.S. and Europe, yet even his popularity is slowly dipping. According to the Kyiv International institute of Sociology, the Ukrainian public’s trust in their government has declined by 35 percentage points since May. The Ukrainian people haven’t given up, but they’ve become a lot more realistic about what may be in store over the coming winter.
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