Understanding the conflict two years on.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Western capitals this month to drum up support for his “victory plan.” The plan’s central planks, which Zelensky outlined to Ukraine’s parliament last week, are simple. Ukraine’s allies should formally invite it to join NATO and provide more weapons to push back the Russian assault. Only then will Russian President Vladimir Putin come to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Putin is following his own victory plan. With his forces suffering their highest casualty rates of the war in September, he recently ordered the conscription of 133,000 new servicemembers in the autumn draft starting Oct. 1 and announced a 25 percent increase in defense spending, which will account for a staggering total of 32 percent of the Russia’s 2025 federal budget.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Western capitals this month to drum up support for his “victory plan.” The plan’s central planks, which Zelensky outlined to Ukraine’s parliament last week, are simple. Ukraine’s allies should formally invite it to join NATO and provide more weapons to push back the Russian assault. Only then will Russian President Vladimir Putin come to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Putin is following his own victory plan. With his forces suffering their highest casualty rates of the war in September, he recently ordered the conscription of 133,000 new servicemembers in the autumn draft starting Oct. 1 and announced a 25 percent increase in defense spending, which will account for a staggering total of 32 percent of the Russia’s 2025 federal budget.

And despite the successful Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region in early August, Russian forces continue to advance in the Donbas region, where the defenders remain outmanned and outgunned, especially since the United States has cut the rate of weapons deliveries.

Given Washington’s continued refusal to allow the Ukrainians to use U.S.-made or designed weapons to strike military and logistical targets inside Russia, the country is also fighting with one hand tied behind its back.

Yet........

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