Ukraine’s October stalemate
Despite recent peacemaking successes, most notably with regards to Gaza, the most coveted of all deals remains elusive to the Trump administration. That deal of course being an end to the war in Ukraine. Four months from now, the Russo-Ukrainian War will enter its fourth year. According to the BBC, the Russians have lost close to 140,000 killed since February 2022. The Wall Street Journal estimates that at this point last year, the Ukrainians had lost some 80,000 troops. Additionally, since 2022 more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict.
Despite the bloodshed, there seems to be no end in sight to the war. Ukrainian advances, like the one into Kursk last year, are met with mixed results at best and have often been rolled back by numerically superior Russian forces. The Russians meanwhile continue to throw masses of men and machines into charnel houses at places like Bakhmut, Pokrovsk Sumy, and the Donetsk Oblast with little to no success in seizing territory. In March of this year, President Vladimir Putin vowed that there was a unique opportunity to “finish off” the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, Russia’s summer offensive aimed at seizing the remainder of the Donetsk Oblast and seizing more territory around Kharkiv fizzled out rather dramatically with only 1,800 square kilometers seized in three months of fighting. By some reputable estimates, the Russian Armed Forces were losing up to 2,000 personnel per week at the height of the offensive.
Despite Putin’s swaggering proclamations over the past three and a half years, Kyiv has not fallen and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have not collapsed. Additionally, despite mounting a formidable defensive posture, the Ukrainians are struggling to win back territory. This is in part due to a very concerning manpower crisis within the Ukrainian Army’s infantry units. Rising casualties and AWOL cases have withered away at Ukrainian combat strength. Cooks and supply troops, many of whom are over the age of 40, have been sent to front line positions to plug gaps.
Faced with a largely failed offensive on the ground, Russia this week has resorted to launching dozens of suicide drones into populated urban areas in and around Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to struggle with negotiating some sort of cessation of hostilities within Ukraine. The White House has indeed come a long way from this past February’s combative encounter between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, albeit in very Trumpian fashion. Last month, Trump claimed Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN.” (Capitals in the original social media post.) However, three weeks later, President Trump said publicly, “They could still win it, I never said they would win it…. War is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen.” This came three days after a reportedly tumultuous meeting where Trump rebuffed Zelenskyy’s demands for Tomahawk cruise missiles. A mere 48 hours later on October 22, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling a planned summit with Putin and instead was placing sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies. The cancellation was caused largely by Putin’s maximalist demands for any sort of ceasefire to take place. Despite Zelenskyy agreeing to a proposal whereby the current frontlines would be frozen in place, Putin has pushed for a unilateral Ukrainian retreat from the Donetsk Oblast before any ceasefire could be agreed to. In response to all of this, the European Union followed suit with a package of sanctions which included a ban on Russian natural gas imports set to go into effect within the next year.
So as October comes to a close, both the diplomatic and military fronts of the Russo-Ukrainian war are at a bitter stalemate. The closest historical example would be 73 years ago in Korea. In 1952, the lines in Korea had stabilized after a massive Chinese/North Korean onslaught in the winter of 1950-51 and renewed offensive actions in the Spring of 1951. Negotiations dragged while soldiers on both sides died assaulting trench lines atop nameless hills. Such is a similar case in Ukraine. Putin’s maximalist demands have dashed the Trump administration’s attempts at bringing peace to Ukraine. How long the current sanctions will remain in place is anyone’s guess. So is the cumulative effect they will have on Moscow. Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding the line in Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kherson. The question is, for how long?
Jim Pomeroy, raised in Bucks County and a former congressional aide, works in higher education. He is the author of Alliances & Armor: Communist Diplomacy and Armored Warfare during the War in Vietnam.
