Maybe this kind of madness and treachery is normal wartime statecraft, we're just seeing this one close up and in real time. Thanks for keeping the faith
Thanks Stefan. I wouldn’t cheer so much on European states announcing this and that. But I guess something for the morale of Ukrainians is needed. Basically again you are alone with a network of small donors abroad.
The complexity of establishing the IAPZ; ROE, defining areas of responsibility, coordination and communication would not be a complete product on day one. With an effort of this magnitude, there would be a huge learning curve as the plan could be phased in, possibly starting on a smaller scale to get the coordination and communications worked out, functioning and familiar to the participants. The potential benefits would make the challenges well worth tackling.
Yes thank you indeed, really appreciate your posts. And your second ystdy detailing team trump’s [attempted] meddling in Ukraine politics was too funny.
Thanks Stefan, as an American baby boomer I hate seeing trump helping putin and the russian invasion. I am ashamed this administration but have hope and faith the good will triumph evil. Slava Ukraine.
Whether an immediate ceasefire benefits Ukraine more, or whether it would be better to "strengthen and arm" Ukraine for a while first, depends on objective, factual things. Mainly -- is the military situation stable? Or is it getting worse and worse? Is it getting worse fast enough to offset any benefit from any surge in aid?
AND -- is any effective surge in military aid even possible without the U.S.? In fact, can the Europeans even surge aid enough to make up for the loss of U.S. aid, much less increase it?
You need to have objective, non-wishful thinking answers to these questions before you can say whether Stubbs is onto something, or not.
The Russians don't seem to be in a hurry to stop the fighting. Maybe that should tell us something. Maybe prolonging the war will just put Ukraine in a worse, rather than better position.
For many reasons, for both Ukraine and Europe, the only acceptable outcome is the stopping of Russian aggression and securing Ukraine’s future. Success for Putin’s Russia achieving their goals (all their goals; complete control of the entire country of Ukraine attained over years if necessary) amounts to a disaster.
Ukraine will not stop fighting, whether things look grim or not, whether they get U.S. support or not, with whatever support they can get from Europe. The suggestion that Europe should base their assistance on trying to guess whether the “military situation is stable” or “getting worse” or not, has nothing to do with the need to provide all the support they can. Including providing whatever diplomatic technique they can to deflect the back-stabbing efforts of the trump regime.
I'm certainly in favor of providing military to support for Ukraine, as long as they ask for it. And we might all agree here that "the only acceptable outcome is the stopping of Russian aggression and securing Ukraine's future."
But what we consider acceptable, and what the Ukrainians consider acceptable, will not determine the outcome. Until there is a peace deal, the outcome will be determined by the reality on the battlefield, regardless of our desires, and regardless of what we consider acceptable or unacceptable.
Therefore, continuing the war may or may not produce a better outcome, than ending it now with an "unacceptable" settlement. If continued fighting results in the final defeat and destruction of Ukraine, then it certainly will not. If continued fighting does not result in final defeat, but results in more lost territory and more lost lives, then that is also will not produce a better outcome. The Russians have been advancing for 15 months straight. Does it really look like the Ukrainians are just about to turn it around? Such that there will be more, rather than less bargaining power, in 3 months, or 6 months from now? Really?
Wishful thinking is really dangerous in a situation like this. Really wanting something does not mean that it will happen. Considering something "unacceptable" does not mean it will not happen, and does not mean that something even more unacceptable will not happen 3 or 6 months from now.
Based on plenty of indications; the “peace deal” that could be expected to come from a process under the control of the Trump regime would lean heavily towards the terms Putin would declare as non-negotiable. These terms would be specifically designed to allow Russia to inflict a total victory over Ukraine when they are fully prepared to arrange it, either through another invasion or by completely subverting the electoral process to install a Orban, Fico or Georgia Dream government. The current United States negotiating team has no interest in considering these likely scenarios in its hurried push for a cease-fire and “peace at any price” effort. Ukraine is correct to absolutely refuse to accept those terms and hold this effort in contempt. Currently to keep fighting, regardless of anyone’s assessment of “the reality on the battlefield” or extrapolation thereof is in their best interest.
The Ukrainians of course have to keep fighting while a peace deal is being made. We should be helping them as much as possible, not cutting them off. But time is running hard against Ukraine, which should be in a hurry.
Putin will get more or less everything he wants, because having let this go on on this trajectory to this point, we've let him acquire a full hand of good cards. Trump's betrayal doesn't actually change things; just accelerates them.
The main thing he wants is a new security architecture for Europe, one where Russia is acknowledged as an equal partner, whose security concerns are taken seriously. Putin keeps talking about root causes of the war. Trump is actively giving him this. Will that do the trick, and facilitate Putin's making peace? We'll see.
We haven’t “let” him have a hand full of good cards. His “cards” are all part of the “optic” Trump is using to justify his hurried effort to force an unjust “peace” in his buddy Putin’s favor. Putin could have, and still might, lose - which would have happened if Trump had an ounce of integrity and fully supported Ukraine at a better than Biden half-hearted rate. But Trump IS Putin’s best card ! Trump’s betrayal changes everything that could have been.
Putin will only get “more or less everything he wants” if Trump is successful at making that happen. Ukraine is NOT going to roll over and give the Trump/Putin alliance what they want. Zelensky knows what’s at stake and is not going to be the patsy Trump wants.
Zelensky is not going to have any choice, with or without Trump. Aren't you following the military situation?
Putin acquired his hand of cards by brutal force of arms. We "let him" because we failed to stop the war when Ukraine still had cards. And by failing to provide enough materiel to even stop the Russians, much less push them back. We knew it would turn out like this, yet we just kept on.
When this is all over, the Ukrainians will hate us as much as the Russians.
No. Not even close on what Putin wants. To be acknowledged as an equal partner does NOT require invading a neighbor and logging thousands of war crimes. Putin wants an empire. He wants possession, or complete domination, of every country that was seized by Russia after WW2 and he’s willing to kill millions of people to get it. A “new security architecture” in Europe is one of HIS blatant excuses for initiating unprovoked hostilities where there was no threat and wasn’t going to be any threat.
Acknowledged as an equal partner? There are no other countries in Europe that would even consider invading a neighbor to make themselves bigger or more powerful. By doing so Putin eliminated any chance of ever being “an equal”, but forever being a horrendous threat to any peace or any stability.
Well, the obvious reponse to that would be that the Ukrainians seem even less intent to quit defending their country and freedom. The 1917 revolution and the first appearance of democratic government in Russia took place as a direct result of the Russian army suffering a critical mass of casualties in a war with objectives the Russian soldiers saw were clearly unattainable.
Certainly a prolonged war threatens Ukraine's survival, but, it is far from a given that a prolonged war doesn't threaten the Putin regime's survival more. At the end of the day the Ukrainians are fighting for their country like the Afghans, Vietnamese etc. etc. who prevailed against major nations invading and attempting to take them over. It's possible to argue that Russia is messaging will to fight not because the Kremlin believes it's in a winning situation, but because any peace deal or even admission of a war result anything short of Kremlin maximalist war aims, would lead inevitably to public unrest or coup attempts in Russia.
At least, I would say, I don't think it follows that because Ukraine is a democratic country with western values and a liberal constitution and a free media, the right policy decision for the United States is to pressure Ukraine to capitulate in hopes of making friends with Russia. After all, if the US objective is simply to end the war, there is always the theoretical option of the US pressuring Russia simply to leave Ukraine, and overnight the war is over.
However, since the present US national leadership seems uninterested in even pressuring Russia for minor concessions, I think we can pardon the Ukrainian national leadership for skepticism about US declarations that Ukraine needs to see reality and "face facts."
This looks much more to Kyiv like great power bullying of a small country to advance perceived great power interests. The Ukrainians live next to Russia, they have centuries of experience with that.
The critical US support category is air defense weapons, particularly Patriot missiles. As we have seen, absence of those missiles gets more Ukrainian cities blown up by Russian ballistic missiles and more Ukrainian civilians killed. Patriot missile shortages relatively speaking aren't that damaging to the war effort. This may well mean the Americans have less leverage over Ukraine than they think they do. The critical weapons categories there are mortar rounds, shells, and drones. The US stopped sending Ukraine weapons about two months ago.
Regarding the aid surge from Europe, I would say a surge is not possible but that substantial European investment in arms manufacturing, in Ukraine, is happening right now and it's expanding fast. This is - wait for it - primarily artillery, shells, higher-tech drones and sea drones. Armored vehicles I understand are coming soon, there is talk about air defense as well.
Last year the Ukrainians manufactured about 1.4 million drones. The projected numbers for this year are nearly double that. About 98 percent of them were FPV drones which amount to a $500 precision-guided munition. Made in Ukraine, don't need to ask anyone for help or for permission to use them.
Before one goes too far down the road of trying to decide whether fighting on would be good or bad for Ukraine, I think a very important question to answer would be: How many soldiers can Russian mobilize to be consumed by those drones, before something cracks in Russia?
So if I follow this argument (correct me if I misunderstood), you're saying that Ukraine might as well keep fighting because Russia might crack before Ukraine. Is that correct? So, do you see any signs of Russia cracking? We've been hearing for three years already that the Russian economy will collapse, Russian society is going to crack and overthrow Putin, the Russian military is going to collapse. Ben Hodges wrote in extra large headlines that the collapse "has already begun", and more than once.
Meanwhile, Russia stubbornly refuses to collapse, and Ukraine loses territory every day. The Russians have had the strategic initiative and have been advancing on the battlefield for something like 18 months straight. That's a pretty unusual thing for a country which is on the verge of collapse. I'm a lifelong student of military history, and I don't know of any case where one party retains the strategic initiative and keeps advancing and then just collapses. This looks like extravagant wishful thinking to me. Wishful thinking which might very well lead to the total destruction of Ukraine and a much worse outcome than what could be obtained by negotiations right now, not to speak of a year ago, or two years ago.
It's not up to us to decide when to give up. But it is up to us to decide whether to keep funding it or not, so we also have agency here. A massive article dropped today in the New York Times with a lot of previously undisclosed information about the deep U.S. involvement in the war. The word "proxy" is no longer taboo, at least in the NYT.
Generally speaking, yes, that would be the argument.
I would say that these are some indicators that Russian capacity to resist is weakening: drastic reduction of the scale of attacks across the front, drastic reduction of the quality of troops making those attacks, Russian tanks lost are now practically all new builds meaning the reserve stocks are just about empty, same for practically every major ground weapons system.
There is the economy. Russian are economists saying GDP is going to shrink this year. I've seen my first reports of state employees (teachers and utilities workers) not getting paid because no cash in government account (Khassakia). Official interest rates in Russia are about 22 percent, real interest rates are about twice that, the ruble is at a two year low and falling.
But the bottom line is Russia appears to be recruiting and fielding about 8-10,000 men a month. Ukrainians if you take their numbers conservatively are killing or wounding about twice that, and possible three times that. Right this moment Ukrainian counterattacks are recovering ground roughtly on par with the Russians gaining ground, although that's probably a short term anomoly.
The main killer in this war is drones not artillery. Last year the Ukrainians made something like 1.4 million drones, this year they credibly seem to be on track to at least double that. When I do the math, it is pretty obvious to me that the Ukrainains can make drones a lot faster, in more quantity, for far less cost, than the Russians can make soldiers.
I too am an enthusiastic and long time reader of military history. Russia had the had the strategic initiative and reasonable shell supplies all through the Brusilov offensive, it did them little good in 1917. Russia had the strategic initative all through the Afghanistan War and the First Chechnya War. Accumulated losses and a perception that war objectives were unachievable ended in Russian retreats. Russia had the strategic initiative right up until the Miracle on the Vistula, and then they didn't.
I think you would agree that throughout most of the US Revolutionary War, the British held the initiative. The US had the strategic initiative in Vietnam, arguably, from start to finish save the Tet Offensive. I think it's safe to say holding the strategic intitiative and wining every battle did not lead to a favorable outcome for the US in Vietnam. Actually the US war in Afghanistan matched that pattern closely, right down to the result. In my view the Ukrainians will fight at least as hard for their country as the Vietnamese or the Afghans, or indeed the Americans, for their countries.
As to US agency, the US quit sending Ukraine weaponry last week. They stopped sending money last year. From this point forward the relationship is only cash on the barrelhead, and only if Ukraine wants something that the US is willing to sell. Ukraine has asked to be allowed to make Patriot missiles under license for better protection against Russian ballistic missiles. The US has said "no".
I think that Ukrainians are fairly skeptical of US claims of having Ukraine's best interests at heart. Me, I was here the last time the Americans embargoed arms deliveries to Ukraine. The Russians were a good deal stronger then. The Ukrainian response was make a Hell of a lot more drones.
If the US in future feels it's necessary to pressure Ukraine while not helping Ukraine, they can of course cut off access to US intell, which is useful if not always timely, and they can deny Ukraine access to spart parts the US has control of supply chains for, particularly F-16 jets donated by other states to Ukraine. Those US interventions would be unpleasant and certainly not the actions of a freedom-supporting state, but wouldn't break Ukrainian resistance.
If one were to speculate, the US could even arm Russia if it the US were to judge US national interest best served b y that, however, I doubt Europe would accept the US arming Russia quietly. A Quisling move like that probably would be one of the very few US actions that would convince Europe simultaneously to re-arm, develop a first tier nuclear force, and reject the US for China as its main superpower ally and trading partner. But that's speculation.
But ultimately I think the argument that negotiations must take place between Ukraine and Russia is a false argument because Putin and his regime have demonstrated repeatedly they do not negotiate in good faith and that they are dedicated to the destruction of Ukrainin independence. You don't negotiate with a hungry shark. The US is unwilling to guarantee Ukrainian security against Russia (arguably this is a direct violation of the Budapest memorandum) and Europe might be willing but currently is insufficiently armed. This leaves the Ukrainians no option but to fight. As long as there is shooting, the shark is bleeding. Telling the Ukrainians to stop doesn't change the shark.
As to the NYT, glad to discuss some other time, but that article really made it look like the war is being fought in Kyiv, Wiesbaden and Washington DC. That's not the way it seems on the line.
Thank you for this Stefan. Sound reporting making sense of this chaos 👍
Thanks Stefan for a very good informative article, I keep hoping Europe steps up and shows trump how idiotic he is
Maybe this kind of madness and treachery is normal wartime statecraft, we're just seeing this one close up and in real time. Thanks for keeping the faith
Excellent analysis Stefan.
Thank you. 🗞️
Thanks Stefan. I wouldn’t cheer so much on European states announcing this and that. But I guess something for the morale of Ukrainians is needed. Basically again you are alone with a network of small donors abroad.
The complexity of establishing the IAPZ; ROE, defining areas of responsibility, coordination and communication would not be a complete product on day one. With an effort of this magnitude, there would be a huge learning curve as the plan could be phased in, possibly starting on a smaller scale to get the coordination and communications worked out, functioning and familiar to the participants. The potential benefits would make the challenges well worth tackling.
Yes thank you indeed, really appreciate your posts. And your second ystdy detailing team trump’s [attempted] meddling in Ukraine politics was too funny.
america has turned of the radar on the f16s, so now they are not great in defense
Thanks Stefan, as an American baby boomer I hate seeing trump helping putin and the russian invasion. I am ashamed this administration but have hope and faith the good will triumph evil. Slava Ukraine.
Whether an immediate ceasefire benefits Ukraine more, or whether it would be better to "strengthen and arm" Ukraine for a while first, depends on objective, factual things. Mainly -- is the military situation stable? Or is it getting worse and worse? Is it getting worse fast enough to offset any benefit from any surge in aid?
AND -- is any effective surge in military aid even possible without the U.S.? In fact, can the Europeans even surge aid enough to make up for the loss of U.S. aid, much less increase it?
You need to have objective, non-wishful thinking answers to these questions before you can say whether Stubbs is onto something, or not.
The Russians don't seem to be in a hurry to stop the fighting. Maybe that should tell us something. Maybe prolonging the war will just put Ukraine in a worse, rather than better position.
For many reasons, for both Ukraine and Europe, the only acceptable outcome is the stopping of Russian aggression and securing Ukraine’s future. Success for Putin’s Russia achieving their goals (all their goals; complete control of the entire country of Ukraine attained over years if necessary) amounts to a disaster.
Ukraine will not stop fighting, whether things look grim or not, whether they get U.S. support or not, with whatever support they can get from Europe. The suggestion that Europe should base their assistance on trying to guess whether the “military situation is stable” or “getting worse” or not, has nothing to do with the need to provide all the support they can. Including providing whatever diplomatic technique they can to deflect the back-stabbing efforts of the trump regime.
I'm certainly in favor of providing military to support for Ukraine, as long as they ask for it. And we might all agree here that "the only acceptable outcome is the stopping of Russian aggression and securing Ukraine's future."
But what we consider acceptable, and what the Ukrainians consider acceptable, will not determine the outcome. Until there is a peace deal, the outcome will be determined by the reality on the battlefield, regardless of our desires, and regardless of what we consider acceptable or unacceptable.
Therefore, continuing the war may or may not produce a better outcome, than ending it now with an "unacceptable" settlement. If continued fighting results in the final defeat and destruction of Ukraine, then it certainly will not. If continued fighting does not result in final defeat, but results in more lost territory and more lost lives, then that is also will not produce a better outcome. The Russians have been advancing for 15 months straight. Does it really look like the Ukrainians are just about to turn it around? Such that there will be more, rather than less bargaining power, in 3 months, or 6 months from now? Really?
Wishful thinking is really dangerous in a situation like this. Really wanting something does not mean that it will happen. Considering something "unacceptable" does not mean it will not happen, and does not mean that something even more unacceptable will not happen 3 or 6 months from now.
We aren’t disagreeing by too much…
Based on plenty of indications; the “peace deal” that could be expected to come from a process under the control of the Trump regime would lean heavily towards the terms Putin would declare as non-negotiable. These terms would be specifically designed to allow Russia to inflict a total victory over Ukraine when they are fully prepared to arrange it, either through another invasion or by completely subverting the electoral process to install a Orban, Fico or Georgia Dream government. The current United States negotiating team has no interest in considering these likely scenarios in its hurried push for a cease-fire and “peace at any price” effort. Ukraine is correct to absolutely refuse to accept those terms and hold this effort in contempt. Currently to keep fighting, regardless of anyone’s assessment of “the reality on the battlefield” or extrapolation thereof is in their best interest.
The Ukrainians of course have to keep fighting while a peace deal is being made. We should be helping them as much as possible, not cutting them off. But time is running hard against Ukraine, which should be in a hurry.
Putin will get more or less everything he wants, because having let this go on on this trajectory to this point, we've let him acquire a full hand of good cards. Trump's betrayal doesn't actually change things; just accelerates them.
The main thing he wants is a new security architecture for Europe, one where Russia is acknowledged as an equal partner, whose security concerns are taken seriously. Putin keeps talking about root causes of the war. Trump is actively giving him this. Will that do the trick, and facilitate Putin's making peace? We'll see.
We haven’t “let” him have a hand full of good cards. His “cards” are all part of the “optic” Trump is using to justify his hurried effort to force an unjust “peace” in his buddy Putin’s favor. Putin could have, and still might, lose - which would have happened if Trump had an ounce of integrity and fully supported Ukraine at a better than Biden half-hearted rate. But Trump IS Putin’s best card ! Trump’s betrayal changes everything that could have been.
Putin will only get “more or less everything he wants” if Trump is successful at making that happen. Ukraine is NOT going to roll over and give the Trump/Putin alliance what they want. Zelensky knows what’s at stake and is not going to be the patsy Trump wants.
Zelensky is not going to have any choice, with or without Trump. Aren't you following the military situation?
Putin acquired his hand of cards by brutal force of arms. We "let him" because we failed to stop the war when Ukraine still had cards. And by failing to provide enough materiel to even stop the Russians, much less push them back. We knew it would turn out like this, yet we just kept on.
When this is all over, the Ukrainians will hate us as much as the Russians.
No. Not even close on what Putin wants. To be acknowledged as an equal partner does NOT require invading a neighbor and logging thousands of war crimes. Putin wants an empire. He wants possession, or complete domination, of every country that was seized by Russia after WW2 and he’s willing to kill millions of people to get it. A “new security architecture” in Europe is one of HIS blatant excuses for initiating unprovoked hostilities where there was no threat and wasn’t going to be any threat.
Acknowledged as an equal partner? There are no other countries in Europe that would even consider invading a neighbor to make themselves bigger or more powerful. By doing so Putin eliminated any chance of ever being “an equal”, but forever being a horrendous threat to any peace or any stability.
Well, the obvious reponse to that would be that the Ukrainians seem even less intent to quit defending their country and freedom. The 1917 revolution and the first appearance of democratic government in Russia took place as a direct result of the Russian army suffering a critical mass of casualties in a war with objectives the Russian soldiers saw were clearly unattainable.
Certainly a prolonged war threatens Ukraine's survival, but, it is far from a given that a prolonged war doesn't threaten the Putin regime's survival more. At the end of the day the Ukrainians are fighting for their country like the Afghans, Vietnamese etc. etc. who prevailed against major nations invading and attempting to take them over. It's possible to argue that Russia is messaging will to fight not because the Kremlin believes it's in a winning situation, but because any peace deal or even admission of a war result anything short of Kremlin maximalist war aims, would lead inevitably to public unrest or coup attempts in Russia.
At least, I would say, I don't think it follows that because Ukraine is a democratic country with western values and a liberal constitution and a free media, the right policy decision for the United States is to pressure Ukraine to capitulate in hopes of making friends with Russia. After all, if the US objective is simply to end the war, there is always the theoretical option of the US pressuring Russia simply to leave Ukraine, and overnight the war is over.
However, since the present US national leadership seems uninterested in even pressuring Russia for minor concessions, I think we can pardon the Ukrainian national leadership for skepticism about US declarations that Ukraine needs to see reality and "face facts."
This looks much more to Kyiv like great power bullying of a small country to advance perceived great power interests. The Ukrainians live next to Russia, they have centuries of experience with that.
The critical US support category is air defense weapons, particularly Patriot missiles. As we have seen, absence of those missiles gets more Ukrainian cities blown up by Russian ballistic missiles and more Ukrainian civilians killed. Patriot missile shortages relatively speaking aren't that damaging to the war effort. This may well mean the Americans have less leverage over Ukraine than they think they do. The critical weapons categories there are mortar rounds, shells, and drones. The US stopped sending Ukraine weapons about two months ago.
Regarding the aid surge from Europe, I would say a surge is not possible but that substantial European investment in arms manufacturing, in Ukraine, is happening right now and it's expanding fast. This is - wait for it - primarily artillery, shells, higher-tech drones and sea drones. Armored vehicles I understand are coming soon, there is talk about air defense as well.
Last year the Ukrainians manufactured about 1.4 million drones. The projected numbers for this year are nearly double that. About 98 percent of them were FPV drones which amount to a $500 precision-guided munition. Made in Ukraine, don't need to ask anyone for help or for permission to use them.
Before one goes too far down the road of trying to decide whether fighting on would be good or bad for Ukraine, I think a very important question to answer would be: How many soldiers can Russian mobilize to be consumed by those drones, before something cracks in Russia?
So if I follow this argument (correct me if I misunderstood), you're saying that Ukraine might as well keep fighting because Russia might crack before Ukraine. Is that correct? So, do you see any signs of Russia cracking? We've been hearing for three years already that the Russian economy will collapse, Russian society is going to crack and overthrow Putin, the Russian military is going to collapse. Ben Hodges wrote in extra large headlines that the collapse "has already begun", and more than once.
Meanwhile, Russia stubbornly refuses to collapse, and Ukraine loses territory every day. The Russians have had the strategic initiative and have been advancing on the battlefield for something like 18 months straight. That's a pretty unusual thing for a country which is on the verge of collapse. I'm a lifelong student of military history, and I don't know of any case where one party retains the strategic initiative and keeps advancing and then just collapses. This looks like extravagant wishful thinking to me. Wishful thinking which might very well lead to the total destruction of Ukraine and a much worse outcome than what could be obtained by negotiations right now, not to speak of a year ago, or two years ago.
It's not up to us to decide when to give up. But it is up to us to decide whether to keep funding it or not, so we also have agency here. A massive article dropped today in the New York Times with a lot of previously undisclosed information about the deep U.S. involvement in the war. The word "proxy" is no longer taboo, at least in the NYT.
Generally speaking, yes, that would be the argument.
I would say that these are some indicators that Russian capacity to resist is weakening: drastic reduction of the scale of attacks across the front, drastic reduction of the quality of troops making those attacks, Russian tanks lost are now practically all new builds meaning the reserve stocks are just about empty, same for practically every major ground weapons system.
There is the economy. Russian are economists saying GDP is going to shrink this year. I've seen my first reports of state employees (teachers and utilities workers) not getting paid because no cash in government account (Khassakia). Official interest rates in Russia are about 22 percent, real interest rates are about twice that, the ruble is at a two year low and falling.
But the bottom line is Russia appears to be recruiting and fielding about 8-10,000 men a month. Ukrainians if you take their numbers conservatively are killing or wounding about twice that, and possible three times that. Right this moment Ukrainian counterattacks are recovering ground roughtly on par with the Russians gaining ground, although that's probably a short term anomoly.
The main killer in this war is drones not artillery. Last year the Ukrainians made something like 1.4 million drones, this year they credibly seem to be on track to at least double that. When I do the math, it is pretty obvious to me that the Ukrainains can make drones a lot faster, in more quantity, for far less cost, than the Russians can make soldiers.
I too am an enthusiastic and long time reader of military history. Russia had the had the strategic initiative and reasonable shell supplies all through the Brusilov offensive, it did them little good in 1917. Russia had the strategic initative all through the Afghanistan War and the First Chechnya War. Accumulated losses and a perception that war objectives were unachievable ended in Russian retreats. Russia had the strategic initiative right up until the Miracle on the Vistula, and then they didn't.
I think you would agree that throughout most of the US Revolutionary War, the British held the initiative. The US had the strategic initiative in Vietnam, arguably, from start to finish save the Tet Offensive. I think it's safe to say holding the strategic intitiative and wining every battle did not lead to a favorable outcome for the US in Vietnam. Actually the US war in Afghanistan matched that pattern closely, right down to the result. In my view the Ukrainians will fight at least as hard for their country as the Vietnamese or the Afghans, or indeed the Americans, for their countries.
As to US agency, the US quit sending Ukraine weaponry last week. They stopped sending money last year. From this point forward the relationship is only cash on the barrelhead, and only if Ukraine wants something that the US is willing to sell. Ukraine has asked to be allowed to make Patriot missiles under license for better protection against Russian ballistic missiles. The US has said "no".
I think that Ukrainians are fairly skeptical of US claims of having Ukraine's best interests at heart. Me, I was here the last time the Americans embargoed arms deliveries to Ukraine. The Russians were a good deal stronger then. The Ukrainian response was make a Hell of a lot more drones.
If the US in future feels it's necessary to pressure Ukraine while not helping Ukraine, they can of course cut off access to US intell, which is useful if not always timely, and they can deny Ukraine access to spart parts the US has control of supply chains for, particularly F-16 jets donated by other states to Ukraine. Those US interventions would be unpleasant and certainly not the actions of a freedom-supporting state, but wouldn't break Ukrainian resistance.
If one were to speculate, the US could even arm Russia if it the US were to judge US national interest best served b y that, however, I doubt Europe would accept the US arming Russia quietly. A Quisling move like that probably would be one of the very few US actions that would convince Europe simultaneously to re-arm, develop a first tier nuclear force, and reject the US for China as its main superpower ally and trading partner. But that's speculation.
But ultimately I think the argument that negotiations must take place between Ukraine and Russia is a false argument because Putin and his regime have demonstrated repeatedly they do not negotiate in good faith and that they are dedicated to the destruction of Ukrainin independence. You don't negotiate with a hungry shark. The US is unwilling to guarantee Ukrainian security against Russia (arguably this is a direct violation of the Budapest memorandum) and Europe might be willing but currently is insufficiently armed. This leaves the Ukrainians no option but to fight. As long as there is shooting, the shark is bleeding. Telling the Ukrainians to stop doesn't change the shark.
As to the NYT, glad to discuss some other time, but that article really made it look like the war is being fought in Kyiv, Wiesbaden and Washington DC. That's not the way it seems on the line.