Ukraine and Russia Aren't About to Collapse

Notes from my 7th trip to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion

A memorial to fallen soldiers at St. Michael’s Square in Kyiv. (Photo: LJ)

I am returning to Berlin after a week in Ukraine. I will write more about my trip here and in other publications soon (which I will share here), but for now, I want to answer a question that I get asked a lot: when will the Russo-Ukrainian War end?

The short answer is not anytime soon. But there are a lot of misconceptions floating around, and one of them is that Ukraine is near collapse. For example, this New York Times story from March quoted an analyst who said that Ukraine's forces could "start to buckle" in four months without American assistance. It's true that the U.S. hasn't delivered any military aid since November: Kyiv now has to finance purchases of American weapons on its own. But the frontline is stable; many people whom I spoke with remain committed to defending Ukraine whatever the U.S. does. Far from collapsing, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on September 18 that he had visited the frontline and that Ukraine had retaken 160 square kilometers of territory.

In visiting Kyiv, it’s also clear that Ukraine isn’t about to fall.