When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine four years ago, there was never much doubt that Roman Ratushnyi would take up arms. The 24-year-old was a seasoned independence activist, having been a teenage leader of the street protests that toppled Kyiv’s pro-Kremlin government in 2014.
When he died just three months into his military service, a street in Kyiv was named after him, and today his grave is a place of pilgrimage for young Ukrainians. The pilgrims also learn, though, that war is irredeemably cruel — as proved by the extra headstone that now lies next to his own. It marks the grave of his brother, Vasyl, who died in combat a year ago this Friday, leaving his parents mourning the loss of both sons.
“Even now, a year later, I’m not sure I can quite accept that it’s happened,” says the brothers’ father, Taras, 52, himself now a captain in an artillery brigade. “We in Ukraine are living through the most horrific experience in Europe since World War II.”
It is men like Taras whom Vladimir Putin would have hoped to have broken by now, wearing their morale down to the point where they no longer wish to fight. Yet as the invasion marks its fourth anniversary today, Taras sees light at the end of a very long tunnel. Not because he thinks victory is immediately within grasp or because he has any faith in Donald Trump’s peace talks. Instead, it is because the past year has been Ukraine’s toughest so far — and yet it has pulled through.
Relentless Russia
After all, it was 12 months ago this week that President Volodymyr Zelensky had his infamous Oval Office fallout with Trump, when the US leader warned that he didn’t have “the cards” to win without US support.
Since then, Russia has continued its slow but steady gains on the battlefield, grinding Kyiv down by its simple willingness to sacrifice far more troops. This winter — the coldest in a decade — Putin has also tried to break Ukraine’s civilian morale, bombing power stations to leave cities unheated in minus-13 degrees. This past Sunday, though, Ukrainians finally observed Kolidii, the traditional Slavic festival that marks the end of winter. And even if temperatures are only up to a balmy 33 degrees, there’s a sense of having weathered the storm.
“The Russians left millions of Ukrainians without heating and electricity, but it’s still not enough,” says Taras. “Did they get our missile or drone factories? No. We are still a force to be reckoned with.”
“There is a sense that the Kremlin has failed to seize the advantage,” adds Alina Frolova, deputy chair of the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian military think tank. “While things aren’t great, we may yet prevail.”
The mood is certainly more upbeat than at the start of winter last November, when Zelensky admitted Ukraine was facing “one of the most difficult moments of our history.”
His government was engulfed in a corruption scandal over the theft of millions of dollars from the state energy provider, the outfit tasked with keeping the country warm in winter. Russian troops were close to seizing Pokrovsk, a strategically important city in the eastern Donbas region. And in US-instigated peace talks, Trump was pressuring Kyiv to a deal that would hand over yet more of its territory to Putin, despite Zelensky warning that Ukrainians themselves would never accept it.
Drones guard line
So how have things changed? On the front lines, Ukraine has focused on using drones rather than infantry, creating a 12-mile deep defensive “kill zone” that is extremely hard for Russian troops to break through. All Moscow can do now is send in small groups of soldiers on near-suicidal raids, which often progress as little as 15 yards a day.
For every single Ukrainian soldier who dies, between five and 25 times that many Russians perish, a ratio that is gradually sapping Moscow’s manpower advantage. Until now, Moscow has bought in new recruits by offering signup bonuses of up to $50,000 — a life-changing sum for many Russians. But Ukrainian officials say that since December, Russian casualty levels have outstripped recruitment. Sanctions, including those imposed by Trump last year on Russian oil, are also starving Moscow of the cash it needs to pay its troops.
The talks, meanwhile, have largely petered out and while Trump may not be giving Ukraine US weapons anymore, he has not stopped his Europe allies buying them on Ukraine’s behalf.
“These are potentially the best prospects Ukraine has had since the war started,” reckons Glen Grant, a former British diplomat and advisor to Ukraine’s defense ministry. He says if Europe ups its weapons supply and follows America’s lead in cracking down on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil-smuggling ships, Ukraine could “catch the moment,” shortening a war that might otherwise drag on till 2030.
Whether Putin wants the conflict to stop is another matter. Peace would bring back hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened, traumatized troops from the front. And if sanctions-battered Russia is no longer a home fit for heroes, then hard questions may be asked about whether it was worth it.
Indeed, as Putin’s “Special Military Operation” becomes the most disastrous five-year plan since the days of the Soviet Union, the real miracle is not that Ukraine is still hanging on, but that he is. Zelensky may not have “the cards” to win, but no longer does Putin — despite having once held all the aces.
Colin Freeman is the author of “The Mad and The Brave: The Untold Story of Ukraine’s Foreign Legion.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
