Hopes were high throughout the spring, as a Ukrainian military equipped with Western weapons prepared to launch a counteroffensive that would reclaim land seized by Russia, which had invaded its much smaller neighbor for the second time in early 2022.“We are getting ready for the counteroffensive, so that we can finally end this war,” one Ukrainian soldier said in late May. The counteroffensive began about three weeks later, with Ukraine making initial gains in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in eastern Ukraine that were illegally annexed by Russia last year.Since then, however, the pace of progress has slowed considerably, leading...