The longer Ukraine delays recognizing reality, the worse it will be for it when it finally does. From Ted Snider at themericanconservative.com:
More weapons for Kiev will only prolong inevitable defeat.
The unfolding history of the war in Ukraine is a story that never needed to be told. The U.S. and NATO could have negotiated with Russia to avert the war; Ukraine could have negotiated peace with Russia shortly after the war began. The U.S. said no to both, and Ukraine’s willingness to fight Russia instead was purchased with false promises.
Ukraine was promised all the military support it needs for as long as it needs it to defend its right to join NATO, to take its place in the European Union and reorient itself to the West, to reclaim all of its lost land, and to weaken and defeat Russia. Not one of those promises has come to fruition, and Ukraine’s story is coming to a very sad end.
The most immediate problem for Ukraine is on the battlefield. The Western media’s narrative has resisted the reality that Russia has long been winning the war. When the media could no longer obscure that reality, they refused to mention Russia’s advance without qualifying it with the misleading words “slow” or “with heavy losses.”
Now, even the mainstream media is voicing concern, speaking of Ukraine’s “struggles to contain Russian summer advances” and warning that “Ukraine can still lose.” Russia is advancing west along the entire—increasingly long—line of contact, which a severely attrited Ukrainian armed forces is struggling to defend. Russia has amassed huge numbers of forces in several regions, including in the Sumy and Pokrovsk areas. They have made incursions near two strategic towns that are key supply routes for Ukraine’s forces in the east. Moscow’s cutting off those routes will affect Kiev’s ability to supply troops.
In June, the Russian armed forces captured 556 square kilometers of land, which is the largest loss of land for Ukraine in one month since at least November 2024 and a lot of territory in the context of a grinding war of attrition.
