We are living through a remarkable Western anticlimax. The US has finally, after half a year of domestic wrangling, passed another large funding package of $61 billion for Ukraine. This money had been presented as decisive: either it would come through or Kiev would be unable to hold its crumbling frontlines against Russia and would lose the war soon, as Ukrainian President Zelensky himself warned.

That was the minimum sales pitch. The more aggressive hard sell went further, claiming that once the money would be added to a fresh mobilization drive in Ukraine, its re-armed and replenished forces would not only resist Russian pressure but turn the tables and, in the end, perhaps in 2025, win the war.

Both these sales pitches were very unrealistic, as marketing often is. Now that the funding is on its way, reality is reasserting itself. There is no surprise that Russian advances are continuing, while the Ukrainian position keeps deteriorating, as the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, General Syrsky, is admitting.

Of course, those who choose to believe that the additional money will make a substantial difference can argue that, at this point, whatever aid will eventually reach Kiev’s troops on the ground has yet to arrive. Yet there are signs that civilian and military officials with inside knowledge of Ukraine’s situation know that its problems are more profound, and that money will not fix them. That is the most plausible explanation for how rapidly these officials have started lowering expectations.

The most striking examples come from some Ukrainian officers on the frontlines, who under the cover of anonymity, have spoken to the Swiss magazine Blick. Their statements are so bleakly sensational that a major Ukrainian news site has reproduced them – Strana.ua, which has a record of challenging the official messages of the Zelensky regime.

These Ukrainian officers predict that Ukraine will lose the war this year. One of them, serving on the frontline in the strategically critical town of Chasov Yar, foresees that the Donbass region – that is, most of the country’s east – will come under full Russian control by October. At that point, he surmises, Kiev will have to negotiate with Moscow. While he still uses the popular euphemism of a “freeze” and avoids terms such as “capitulation,” under such circumstances these negotiations would clearly amount to a form of surrender. The British magazine The Economist also quoted a commander in Chasov Iar as stating that he and other........

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