Zelensky says Ukraine can deliver frontline success – but the current stalemate with Russia is hurting Kyiv

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his troops can still deliver results on the frontline and says that country has a battlefield plan for 2024, without revealing details.

"We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very [concrete] directions where we go. I can't share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east," he said. "And some, I think good steps ... near Kherson region. I am sure we'll have success. It's difficult."

Ukrainian forces have been trying to establish a bridgehead on the eastern, Russian-occupied, bank of the vast Dnipro river in Kherson region. A rapid counteroffensive liberated the region west of the Dnipro and its capital, Kherson City, almost exactly a year ago.

The issue for Zelensky is that it is clear that there is little movement along a frontline that stretches for hundreds of miles. The commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military, General Valery Zaluzhny, suggested last week that Russia and Ukraine were at stalemate along the front, despite intensive fighting and high casualty rates. He compared the situation to the slow-paced trench warfare of the First World War, when neither side could make significant advances.

In most surveys, Zaluzhny figures alongside Zelensky as one of Ukraine’s most trusted public figures and Zelensky has signalled he does not want his chief warrior’s opinions to escalate into a damaging row for his administration and the country.

So Zelensky’s response was a mild rebuke, saying the situation was "not a stalemate”. But he admitted that as "time has passed... people are tired”. His deputy spokesperson, Ihor Zhovkva, was more barbed though suggesting that comments about a stalemate were a propaganda gift to Russians and that the comments stirred "panic" in Western allies.

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Zelensky later called on his nation to remain united and not to be drawn into infighting as clashes continue against Russian forces

"Now everyone should think about defending our country. We need to pull ourselves together, avoid unwinding and splitting up into disputes or other priorities," he said. "If there is no victory, there will be no country. Our victory is possible."

But Zaluzhny's remarks have not caused despair or criticism among the Ukrainian soldiers at the frontlines or within wider Ukrainian society. That is because the most surprising thing about Zaluzhny’s statement was not what he said but that he made his conclusions so openly known in an interview and essay for The Economist.

Much of Ukrainian media has been candid about the pace of the offensive and Ukraine’s “bush telegraph” is formidable: Almost every Ukrainian family has someone in the armed forces; Everyone knows a person who has been killed or wounded. So most people already understood that the summer offensive to take back Russian-occupied territory had run into severe difficulties.

However, both Zaluzhny and Zelensky agree on the causes of the offensive failing to match the high hopes voiced by Kyiv and her allies when it began in early June – chiefly a lack of modern and powerful Western weapons in sufficient quantities to press home a successful campaign against the Russians.

When Vladimir Putin launched his full-blown invasion in February 2022, most of Ukraine’s allies believed that Russia’s massive advantage in weaponry and soldiers would inevitably give victory to Moscow and so were reluctant to provide modern weapons they feared would be captured by the Kremlin's forces. After Ukraine proved its mettle and ground the Russian invasion to a stop with the limited resources it then had, Ukraine’s Western allies, with America providing the largest share, supplied better and larger quantities of weapons.

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But Ukraine said that it needed much more to ensure a summer offensive allowed it to push Russian forces back in a number of areas of the south and east of Ukraine. But weapons were slow in arriving, and Kyiv says the pace is still far below what is needed. Western nations have been choosing, preparing and also repairing mothballed equipment or weapons drawn out of service with their own militaries, then having to transport large and heavy weaponry and millions of shells and other ammunition by sea or air and land.

Delays have not been just logistical but have also been caused by anxiety that providing some categories of weapons, especially those with the range to reach Russia itself, might provoke an angry Kremlin into direct conflict with Nato countries.

But this gave Russia precious time to prepare formidable three-layered defences for Ukraine’s much-heralded offensive. The first layer of Russia’s defences along the 600-mile front included densely sowing the ground that Ukrainian forces would have to cross with hundreds of square miles of minefields. Russian artillery also zeroed in one every point of that no-man’s land. Ukrainian forces have suffered huge casualties in the minefields and were unable to use much of their newly-acquired tanks and armoured vehicles.

Ukraine has also blamed lacklustre progress on a lack of modern fighter planes, which it has asked for repeatedly since the start of the conflict, not yet being sent. Particularly US-made F-16 fighters. Russia’s air force is many times bigger and has more modern planes and helicopters. Ukraine’s competent anti-air defences have punched far above their weight, but close to the frontlines Moscow has been able to use its aircraft, swooping in from bases in Russia, to inflict devastating losses on Ukrainian forces either by directly attacking them or supporting Russian mass ground assaults.

Earlier this year Ukraine’s allies committed to supplying F-16s but there will be a long delay as Ukrainian pilots and ground crew receive training abroad to operate the fighters. It is unlikely Ukrainian F-16s will be used much before next spring.

Zaluzhny has admitted that he thought Russia would halt the invasion when it had suffered huge battlefield losses, estimated by Western allies as more than 150,000 killed – Kyiv claims Moscow’s losses are closer to 250,000. He, like many others, had not reckoned with Putin’s willingness to sacrifice huge numbers of his countrymen

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However, Kyiv is aware that without Western aid the country would face defeat. Even in his assessment of a stalemate Zaluzhny emphasised Ukraine’s gratitude for the help its allies have given, saying: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have got.”

He maintains Ukraine can be victorious but for that it needs modern fighter planes and air defence systems to secure air superiority; equipment to break through minefields in depth; improve the effectiveness of its counter-battery capabilities – the systems that target enemy artillery and increase drone and electronic warfare capabilities.

Ukraine knows that a long war could favour Putin, who believes Kyiv’s western allies will become less supportive if they perceive a deadlocked conflict. Russia does not care about the scale of its losses and also has a far larger arsenal of weapons and the manufacturing and economic potential to replenish lost supplies.

As winter rolls in, and battlefield conditions become ever more difficult, the chance of significant movement reduces further. Zelensky is clear that victory over Russia's forces is the only objective, but that will mean making sure Western support does not flag – not least in the US, where the issue of funding for Ukraine is increasingly becoming a political football.

America’s NBC news channel said that US and European officials had broached a peace deal with Russia in “delicate” talks last month with the Ukrainian administration during a meeting of the 50-strong Contact Group of countries supporting Ukraine.

NBC said two sources, one a current and the other a former senior US official, said many in the Contact Group worry fighting has reached a stalemate and that while aid to Ukraine is finite, Russia seems to have limitless resources to carry on the war. Ukraine has always said it would never concede Russian-occupied territory to Moscow. Zelensky said there had been no pressure from the US or other allies for him to do that. Washington reiterated it would not push Ukraine into an agreement it did not want.

Kyiv also fears it is entering a second winter of sustained Russian air strikes on its power grid and infrastructure across the country, which can only hamper efforts still further.

While Russia has plenty of problems over its invasion – many of them caused by the tenacity of Ukrainian forces – a stalemate on the frontline certainly has greater consequences for Ukraine.