“How will Zelensky get out of this situation? I have no idea,” said a Ukrainian lawmaker who, like other officials and diplomats interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the highly sensitive politics. “And of course it concerns me.”

Who tf cares about Zelensky? He has kissed the boot of the American empire and deserves whatever comes to him, which I am going to guess will be delivered by azov assassins coping with their loss by way of a stab in the back theory.

What about the Russian and Ukrainians dying daily, or the Russia civilians caught in the Donbass since 2014?

This was supposed to be an election year for Zelensky, but Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections under martial law, and some officials here worry that Russia will try to cast Zelensky as an illegitimate ruler once he is serving longer than his elected five-year term — despite the inherent hypocrisy in Putin’s own repeated disregard for term limits.

I’m not a liberal so I’m not precious about term limits as a litmus test for legitimacy.

What is a good litmus test for legitimacy, though, is the fact that the Ukrainian government banned all left wing parties and repealed trade union protections, using the war as a smokescreen to do the bidding of capital.

If Kyiv faces Russian forces with inadequate support this year, the ambassador said, there will be increased casualties and territorial losses, putting Ukraine on the back foot.

Ukraine and its partners must prepare for 2025 as “another year of war, not peace talks,” the ambassador said. “If [the] West wants peace, it should not only respond to current Ukrainian needs, but use 2024 to provide Ukraine with everything that’s necessary to enter into offensive mode and make substantial gains in 2025.”

Damn haven’t heard this one before. “Give us more guns so we can channel our inner General Haig and lose it all in a farce of the Somme. Maybe we can breach 1 line of Russian defences this time.”

Ukrainians have resigned themselves to a long war. Some have been fighting since 2014, when Russia first stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.

This is the worst part of the whole article. Apparently Putin’s Russia invented Stepan Bandera.

Paywalled