Month by month Ukraine’s wishlist of weapons has shrunk. At the start of the war came Javelins and Stingers to take out tanks and planes. Then came artillery. himars rocket-launchers followed in the summer. This January it was tanks. And in August the White House even agreed that European allies could send f-16 jets.

Only one major weapon was left: the Army Tactical Missile System, known by its acronym atacms (pronounced attack ’ems). On September 21st that hurdle fell when Joe Biden, America’s president, told Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, during a meeting in the White House, that “a small number” of atacms were on their way, according to reports in the American press the following day. The move, first reported by nbc News, has not been formally announced.

Atacms has acquired totemic status during the war. It is a ballistic missile that can be fired from the himars launchers Ukraine is already operating. Thus far those have mostly fired gps-guided rockets known as gmlrs, which can travel 70km or so. The initial appeal of atacms was that it could go a lot further—the official range is 300km—allowing Ukraine to reach even those facilities which Russia had moved farther behind the front lines.

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Joe Biden’s critics saw his reluctance to send the missiles as a sign of timidity. His reversal on the issue is a sign of trust—and may have positive knock-on effects https://t.co/YjTRbd80RS

— The Economist US (@EconUS) September 23, 2023

[Ruslana] Danilkina is one of between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians who have lost one or more limbs since the start of the war, according to previously undisclosed estimates by prosthetics firms, doctors and charities.

The actual figure could be higher because it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure. Some are only amputated weeks or months after being wounded. And with Kyiv’s counteroffensive under way, the war may be entering a more brutal phase.

By comparison, some 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons had to have amputations during the course of World War I, when the procedure was often the only one available to prevent death. Fewer than 2,000 U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions had amputations.

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Incredible courage: Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have lost limbs since the start of the war, according to new estimates https://t.co/Kpguey0rRN via @WSJ

— Nile Gardiner (@NileGardiner) August 1, 2023

Shunned in the West, his authority tested by a failed mutiny at home, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia needs to project normalcy and shore up support from his allies. So on Thursday, he will host African leaders at a flashy summit in St. Petersburg, part of his continuing outreach to a continent that has become critical to Moscow’s foreign policy.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, some African countries have backed Mr. Putin at the United Nations, welcomed his envoys and his warships, and offered control of lucrative assets, like a gold mine in the Central African Republic that U.S. officials estimate contains $1 billion in reserves.

But if Mr. Putin sought to move closer to African leaders as he prosecuted his war, the 17-month-old conflict is now straining those ties. This summit is expected to draw only half the number of African heads of state or government as the last gathering in 2019, a situation that the Kremlin on Wednesday blamed on “brazen interference” from the United States and its allies.

The summit comes against the backdrop of escalating tensions in the Black Sea over Mr. Putin’s recent decision to terminate a deal allowing Ukraine to ship grain to global markets. Russia’s withdrawal has caused food prices to spike, adding to the misery of the world’s poorest countries, including some of those attending the Russia-Africa summit.

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Shunned in the West and tested by a failed mutiny at home, Vladimir Putin will look to project normalcy and shore up support from other parts of the world as he hosts African leaders at a flashy summit in his home city, St. Petersburg, this week. https://t.co/s9flu3mDVI

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 26, 2023

What options do Washington and its NATO allies have? Just wait and see?

If Washington, NATO, Ukraine, are seen as backing Prigozhin, in cahoots with Prigozhin, it could have the effect of undermining whatever chances he might have to catalyze an end to the aggression. So the response has been properly to just let it unfold, with a bit of tongue in cheek commentary out of Kyiv, but otherwise bite-the-tongue restraint in D.C. and Brussels.

Behind the scenes, of course, it’s 24/7 very close monitoring of everything and anything, and intense consultation. Twelve hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, of nail biting. But after all the Sturm und Drang, we could be right back where we started: Putin in power in Moscow and Ukraine facing a counteroffensive that will be very difficult to pull off.

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“Putin has unwittingly launched a stress test of his own regime.” Read Stephen Kotkin what Prigozhin’s rebellion could mean for Russia’s future.https://t.co/sH0Iu9feqs

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 26, 2023

Russia’s most powerful mercenary said on Sunday that his fighters would not sign contracts with the country’s defence minister, publicly refusing an attempt by the Kremlin to bring his fighting force under its sway.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, has repeatedly attacked Vladimir Putin’s top military brass for what he casts as treachery for failing to fight the war in Ukraine properly.

Neither Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, nor Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, have commented in public on the insults from Prigozhin, whose forces in May took the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after a battle in which tens of thousands perished.

The defence ministry on Saturday said Shoigu had ordered all “volunteer detachments” to sign contracts with his ministry by the end of the month, a step it said would increase the effectiveness of the Russian army.

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Wagner boss refuses to allow his mercenaries to join Putin's forces.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has repeatedly attacked Putin’s top military brass for failing to fight the war in Ukraine properly.https://t.co/YdspWjmC7D

— Mayte Chummia (@Maytechummia) June 12, 2023

Drone strikes inside Russia are now a near-daily occurrence. Those in Moscow have had limited military impact. But, along with hits on refineries and airfields, ground incursions in the southern Belgorod region and assassinations of several prominent Russian war supporters, the attacks have caused a psychological shift.

Fifteen months after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, expecting a quick victory, the war has come to the heart of Russia. The country’s elites, who believed themselves safe as the invasion campaign rumbled far away, are rattled.

As Moscow struggles with how to respond, each new attack is a blow to the official narrative of Russian supremacy and a challenge to Putin’s image of invincibility.

“The society is starting to worry: Will the war expand inside Russia?” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “There is a slow internal erosion under way, in attitudes towards the war and towards the elites.”

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Ukraine’s top commander Zaluzhny argued last fall that Russia’s “center of gravity” in the war is impunity, a sense among Russians that the war is remote and doesn’t touch their lives. My piece on how recent drone strikes and, now, incursions, upend this. https://t.co/4nRRR23dT4

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) June 6, 2023

For months a guessing game has played out in military circles worldwide: where and when would Ukraine conduct its counter-offensive? Most expected it to come through Zaporizhia province, in the south of the country, perhaps directed at the city of Melitopol, with the aim of cutting the “land bridge” seized by Russian troops at the start of the war that connects occupied Crimea with Russia itself. Western officials had expected the offensive to begin two weeks ago, and some were getting impatient.

On June 4th—two days before the anniversary of D-Day, the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis—Ukrainian forces launched what Russia’s defence ministry called a “large-scale” assault on five axes in the south-east of Donetsk province, in eastern Ukraine. Some of them may indeed threaten the land bridge; others were further to the north. Western officials tell The Economist that this does in fact mark the start of the offensive, with attacks also under way on other parts of the front. Yet the cream of Ukraine’s forces has not yet appeared on the battlefield.

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Our take on Ukraine’s counter-offensive—by me, @ArkadyOstrovsky & @olliecarroll. We think attacks of last 24 hours in Donetsk (& elsewhere) are not just as business as usual. But we probably aren’t seeing the main effort just yet. Watch this space. https://t.co/lTyDJc7ykX

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) June 5, 2023

The F-16, with its longer-range radars, sensors and missiles, would restore the Ukrainian air force’s edge both qualitatively and quantitatively — and push the VKS back into Russia. That will, in turn, protect both Ukraine’s ground forces and its critical infrastructure. But boosting its effectiveness in the absence of wider air power packaging will require imagination.

Integrated air defence systems work far better than those operating in isolation. The Ukrainian air force must link together its western surface-to-air missiles and their advanced radars to provide its pilots with an enhanced picture of the aerial battle. Ground-based electronic warfare systems can do much to degrade Russian radars, and thereby its surface-to-air missile belt. Using rapidly-prototyped drones in reconnaissance and suppressing enemy air defence missions would make Russia’s fighter aircraft more vulnerable. This package of largely ground-based supporting systems — much cheaper than airborne ones — would allow Ukraine to retain the initiative in the air battle.

Finally, there is a moral dimension to consider. Nato would fight Russia by winning the air battle first, and then using air superiority to drive a more efficient land battle. Given the weakness of the VKS, this is no pipe dream. But the west’s constrained donations to date have forced Ukraine to pursue grinding land tactics. We have restricted Kyiv to fighting in a way that we would not, and to take casualties that we would not.

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Our taboo on giving aircraft to Ukraine made the war longer and deadlier. New European and US initiatives to help Ukrainians secure their own skies will save lives and shorten the war.https://t.co/4B8r815gWG

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) May 26, 2023

Evidence is mounting that Moscow has failed to make much progress in the Donbas of eastern Ukraine, despite months of fighting in the industrial and agricultural region close to the Russian border.

Russia’s military bloggers and like-minded activists have in recent weeks lamented the lack of progress from the winter campaign. Russia has not secured victory in the city of Bakhmut, or in the towns or Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Lyman or Marinka.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, said on Sunday that his forces had raised a Russian flag over an administrative building in Bakhmut, according to the Reuters news agency, but acknowledged that Ukraine was still holding the western part of the city. Mr. Prigozhin has prematurely called such victories before.

“The winter campaign in the Donbas is over,” said Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who led a military intervention in eastern Ukraine and now blogs about military affairs. “We can say that the winter campaign ended unsuccessfully.” The comments by Mr. Girkin, who uses the nickname Strelkov, were echoed by others in Russia who have ties to the military and have at times been critical of the Kremlin’s approach to the war.

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Russia’s assault in eastern Ukraine appears stalled. via ⁦@nytimes⁩ https://t.co/3frQ6Z4H1H

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) April 4, 2023

Each war teaches us something new about trauma. In World War I, hospitals overflowed with soldiers who screamed or froze or wept, described in medical texts as “moral invalids.” By the end of World War II, a more sympathetic view had emerged, that even the hardiest soldier would suffer a psychological collapse after sufficient time in combat — somewhere, two experts from the surgeon general’s office concluded, between 200 and 240 days on average.

Russia’s war in Ukraine stands out among modern wars for its extreme violence. Its front lines are close together and barraged with heavy artillery, and rotations from the front line are infrequent. Ukraine’s forces are largely made up of men and women who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat.

“We are looking at a war that is basically a repetition of the First World War,” says Robert van Voren, who heads the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry, which provides mental-health support in Ukraine. “People just cannot fight anymore for psychological reasons. People are at the front line too long, and at a certain point, they crack. That’s the reality we have to deal with.”

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The war in Ukraine stands out for its extreme violence, and Ukrainian forces are largely made up of people who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat. Hospitals in Ukraine cannot manage the volume of psychiatric casualties coming in. https://t.co/43mu2NwrnE

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) March 15, 2023

The quality of Ukraine’s military force, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, has been degraded by a year of casualties that have taken many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield, leading some Ukrainian officials to question Kyiv’s readiness to mount a much-anticipated spring offensive.

U.S. and European officials have estimated that as many as 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of Russia’s invasion early last year, compared with about 200,000 on the Russian side, which has a much larger military and roughly triple the population from which to draw conscripts. Ukraine keeps its running casualty numbers secret, even from its staunchest Western supporters.

Statistics aside, an influx of inexperienced draftees, brought in to plug the losses, has changed the profile of the Ukrainian force, which is also suffering from basic shortages of ammunition, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel in the field.

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A pretty bleak assessment of the state of Ukraine’s military in the Washington Post:
Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow https://t.co/ySom9PZkE0

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 13, 2023

Churches in Ukraine have marked the first anniversary of the Russian invasion with calls to prayer and fasting, as President Putin vowed to continue his military assault, and President Biden rallied morale during visits to Kyiv and Warsaw.

“We are now witnessing a media information wave about a major Russian offensive and troop mobilisation for a second large-scale attack,” the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, which includes the main Christian denominations, as well as Jewish and Muslim leaders, said in an appeal on Monday.

“Millions of believers are praying for an end to this war every day, but the great evil at its root does not want to retreat. In these fateful times, we understand that Ukraine needs God’s power to defeat the Russian aggressor.”

The appeal was published in the run-up to Friday’s anniversary, as European Union foreign ministers discussed arms supplies, and Ukrainian fighters struggled to hold back attacks on the eastern town of Bakhmut and other Russian targets.

The appeal mentioned that “many politicians and experts” had predicted that Ukraine would fall within three days of the invasion on 24 February 2022. They now also agreed that a “miracle had happened” when numerically and technically superior forces had been held back.

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Ukrainian Churches mark war’s anniversary with fresh appeals for aid https://t.co/RvADToHAw8

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 24, 2023