Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Shows Time Isn’t on Putin’s Side

A battle for initiative is raging in southern and eastern Ukraine, and signs suggest that Ukrainian forces are gaining momentum on both fronts. This is hardly Ukraine’s last gasp. Time isn’t really on Russia’s side in this war, even if Putin — and some Ukrainian officials — appear to believe otherwise.

Putin’s certainty that he will prevail despite the failure of his earlier blitzkrieg plans — on Wednesday, he reiterated this confidence to an audience in the Far East — is based on Ukraine’s obvious relative weakness. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has to lobby the US and its NATO allies for every dozen howitzers — and every time he does that, his success is not assured. Russia, with its stockpiles of military equipment — even if it’s now relying more on older weaponry — can fight more confidently. Besides, the Russian economy, despite all its sanctions-related problems, is not in ruins and can survive even a 12% drop in GDP, the worst scenario predicted by government economists in a confidential report recently made public by Bloomberg News. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian economy is destroyed, with much of the infrastructure in rubble, civilian industries at a standstill and crops damaged by fighting. It is almost entirely dependent on Western aid for medium-term survival.