As you’d expect, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been working the room at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. After a disappointing end to 2023 on the battlefield, with signs of battle fatigue among some of his key allies, Zelensky will be aware of the need to press his country’s case to so many world leaders. An estimated 60 heads of state and government are thought to have made the trip to Switzerland for this global forum, more than in previous years.
It was preceded by a meeting of more than 90 national security advisers, for whom a key agenda item was coming up with a viable peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine. Zelensky will also have been aware of the way the focus of global attention has moved to events in the Middle East, so a chance to get in front of his allies at this point is like gold dust.
There were positive noises from Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, as well as US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who emphasised Ukraine’s success in winning back more than half the territory Russia had occupied since February 2022, as well as – for now at least – breaking Russia’s blockade in the Black Sea to allow grain ships in and out of its ports. Sullivan also praised the way Ukraine had managed to establish a viable defence industrial base.
The fruits of this were demonstrated this week when a hybrid “FrankenSAM” air defence system, which merges advanced western missiles with a Soviet-era launcher, successfully shot down an Iranian-made Shahed drone. Ukraine is also reported to be ramping up domestic production of Nato-compatible ammunition.
All of which will be doubly important if, as is now being widely reported, Russia is preparing to launch a major new ground offensive in the coming weeks. As Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko report, Russian forces have intensified their attacks on various sectors along the frontline in Ukraine, and have made some small territorial gains in the past week or so.
Wolff and Malyarenko, international security experts from the universities of Birmingham and Odesa respectively, highlight the extent to which shortages of weapons and ammunition are making it increasingly difficult for Ukraine to hold the line, let alone deliver the sort of battlefield........