After almost 30 months into war with Russia, Ukraine's battlefield difficulties are mounting, while vital US support increasingly depends on shifting political winds.
A six-month delay in military aid from the US, Ukraine's biggest single donor, has allowed Kremlin forces to move to the front lines. Now Ukrainian troops are fighting to stop the slow but gradual gains of Russia's larger and better armed army.
"The next two to three months are likely to be the most difficult for Ukraine this year,”, military analyst Michael Coffman of the "Carnegie” Foundation said in a recent podcast.
Lying in the background is another nagging worry for Ukraine: How long will the Western political and military support that is crucial to its struggle last?
On Monday, former President Donald Trump tapped Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his running mate for the November U.S. election, and Vance wants the United States to deal with its own problems — not necessarily a war thousands of miles away. continent, despite saying that Putin was wrong to invade.
This opinion coincides with the position of Trump himself. Trump has said that if elected, he would end the conflict before Inauguration Day in January. He refuses to say how.
Meanwhile, Hungary's pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán - whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union - recently angered other EU leaders by holding unprincipled meetings with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Europe's biggest war since World War II has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people on both sides, including thousands of civilians. There are no signs of it ending anytime soon.
And Putin wants to drag out the war in hopes of reducing the West's willingness to send more billions of dollars to Kiev.
Here are the main challenges facing Ukraine:
Russia holds 18 percent of Ukrainian territory after defense forces pushed it out of half of the territory it seized after its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank, said in May. In 2014, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine.
Russia has not scored a major victory on the battlefield since capturing the key town of Avdeevka in February. But its forces are now advancing in the border regions: Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, Donetsk in the east, and Zaporozhye in the south.
To buy time, Ukraine is implementing a strategy of elastic defense, ceding some territory to wear down Russian troops while Western supplies reach its brigades. But analysts warn that Russia will undoubtedly win a protracted war of attrition unless Ukraine can strike using the element of surprise.
On Sunday, Russia said its forces had taken control of the Donetsk village of Urozhaine, but Ukrainian officials said fighting was still going on there. Moscow's army is seeking to capture the nearby strategic hill town of Chasov Yar, which could allow it to penetrate deeper into Donetsk Oblast.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, Ukrainian forces are largely holding off Russian pressure around the northeastern city of Kharkiv. Kremlin troops are trying to close in on the city and put it within range of their artillery and create a buffer zone in the region to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia fires missiles into rear areas, striking civilian infrastructure. Last week, it carried out a massive airstrike that killed 31 civilians and hit Ukraine's largest children's hospital in Kyiv.
Disrupting Ukraine's electricity supply is a primary goal of Russia's ongoing long-range missile and drone attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the bombing destroyed 80% of Ukraine's tets and a third of the vets.
According to analysts, Ukraine is probably in for a tough winter.
Ukraine is such a large country that in order to protect it as a whole, large-scale air defenses would be needed. The country needs 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully protect its airspace. New munitions supplies to Ukraine are headed to units along the contact line, easing a severe shortage of artillery shells for Kiev and allowing it to begin stabilizing the front line.
But it will take time for Kiev's army to fully replenish its depleted supplies. According to estimates of military analysts, Ukraine will be able to organize a counteroffensive at the end of this year at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Russia is spending record sums on defense to fund its all-out war.
Russia's tactic is to destroy cities and villages to make them unlivable and to deprive Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves. Powerful planning bombs level buildings to the ground. Then the Russian infantry enters.
Ukraine has been slow to build defense lines, but according to analyst reports, its fortifications have improved in recent months.
The Russian army has made slow progress at eastern and southern points along the roughly 1,000-kilometer front line, but has not made a significant breakthrough recently and its advance has been costly, Ukrainian officials say.
In April, Ukraine passed an extended conscription law aimed at replenishing depleted and depleted forces.
Zelensky said on Monday that the campaign is going well, even though the country does not have enough training grounds for the new soldiers. In addition, 14 brigades have not yet received their promised Western weapons.
NATO countries took steps this month to ensure that Ukraine will continue to receive long-term security assistance and military training.
Alliance leaders meeting in Washington last week signed an agreement to send more Stinger missiles. - portable surface-to-air defense system.
Ukraine is also preparing to receive the first F-16 military aircraft donated by European countries.
However, Zelensky is disappointed. He says Ukraine cannot win the war unless the US abandons its restrictions on using its weapons to attack military targets on Russian soil.
translation: Plamen Yotinski, BTA