Ukraine is Losing the War

Spectator ^ | 9/8/26 | Owen Matthews

[EnderWiggin1970]

Vladimir Putin has not changed his war aims a jot since 2022 and remains determined on fighting on. Donald Trump has no new plan for peace other than bringing the Ukraine war to an end on Putin’s terms. And Kyiv is running out of money and men to defend itself, just as surely as it has already run out of Patriot interceptors to defend its skies against the Kremlin’s barrages.

Those are the three depressing takeaways from the latest round of shuttle diplomacy in Moscow and Kyiv by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

On the eve of their departure, Trump said his boys would be presenting ‘a new plan’ for Ukraine. It quickly became clear that no such initiative existed. Instead, a grinning Putin simply cycled through his old talking points about liberating all of Donbas and insisting that Ukraine still needed to be ‘demilitarised’ and ‘denazified.’

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TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; Ukraine
KEYWORDS: ajntsa; fraud; trump; ukraine; zelensky

[EnderWiggin1970]

Unsurprisingly, August polls by SOCIS show that a majority of Ukrainians consider corruption a more serious threat to their state than Russia – and that nearly 57 per cent of Ukrainians blame Zelensky for the prevalence of corruption, nearly double the number in a similar poll from April 2025.

This strikes me as a quiet way of Ukrainians saying they would prefer a Russian victory over remaining under corrupt Ukrainian control.

The crunch point – where those promises will finally crash hard into reality – will come soon in the form of an imminent fiscal crisis in Kyiv. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Serhii Koretsky recently announced that Kyiv has already spent most of its 2026 defence funds and faces a looming €26 billion (£22 billion) budget black hole – despite a recent €90 billion (£78 billion) loan from the EU. That loan, secured after months of Brussels horse-trading, represented the high-water mark of what the EU is realistically capable of raising. As Ukraine heads into the hardest and most punishing winter of the war, it is about to run out of not only Patriot missiles and men for the front lines, but money to fight on.

Will unpaid men continue fighting? Will unpaid factories continue building weapons (and will unpaid suppliers keep providing them with components)? In desperation Ukraine thought interrupting shipments of curtains and aroma candles to Russian babushkas through Wildberries strikes would make a difference on the battlefield. In return the entire port infrastructure Ukraine depends on was destroyed. NATO can't prop up its cannon fodder forever.

[BenLurkin]

What war?

[Petrosius]

Right! Putin is winning the war as the Russian economy is being systematically destroyed, Russian troops have barely advanced in four years and are now being driven back, and because of his own troop shortage he is contemplating a general mobilization which might tear Russia apart.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

---- "Ukraine is Losing the War" says Owen Matthews from the Spectator UK.

And....

Ukraine has already won the war against Russia, Finnish president tells CNBC 7 July 2026

It surely seems a matter of which voices one wants to hear....

Or maybe it's Schrödinger’s war.

[BOBWADE]

What was your first clue Mr Wizard?

[marron]

Russia will lose this war and Putin will not survive losing it.

[Red6]

Reciprocal arguments.

Russia is doing a slow creep to keep the pressure on so that Ukraine cannot amass a larger force to launch an offensive with, but also to create a cost for not settling (the longer the war, the more Ukraine loses).

Your just flipping things around rhetorically.

Example of a reciprocal argument:

In Iraq 2003, one of our goals was to “bring the fight to the enemy,” i.e. if we plant a US flag in Karbala next to Mohammed’s grandsons tomb, they can’t help themselves, they will come to fight us.

The Democrats rhetorically flipped this argument around, “There was no AQ in Iraq until we went there.”

[SmokingJoe]

Ukraine faces severe shortages of money, manpower, and air-defense interceptors (especially Patriots), while Russian long-range strikes on cities and infrastructure are intensifying and Western support has practical limits.

[desertsolitaire]

Remind us again what doing the same thing again and again and expecting different outcomes is the definition of?

[Apparatchik]

Vladimir Putin has not changed achieved his war aims a jot since 2022 and remains determined on fighting on systematically destroying his economy, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own troops, and making Russia the international pariah that it has become.

There, fixed it.

[Nebr FAL owner]

What I know is Putin isn’t winning.NAtO is providing aid and arms If the Ukrainians hold on make the country a bleeding wound Putin will lose power maybe get shot.

[Williams]

Both sides are desperate I think Putin at the moment is feeling more desperate than Ukraine.
But Putin is a brutal and evil man and doesn’t care how many he kills so long as he wins in the end.
So a toss up.

[BobL]

“Ukraine faces severe shortages of money, manpower, and air-defense interceptors (especially Patriots)”

You’re going to piss off the Neocon Cheerleaders who CLAIM that we have a never-ending supply of Patriots and thus will never run out, despite everything they hear (which is totally to the contrary). Weird how twisted their thinking is...

[marktwain]

Both sides are desperate I think Putin at the moment is feeling more desperate than Ukraine.
But Putin is a brutal and evil man and doesn’t care how many he kills so long as he wins in the end.
So a toss up.

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It has come down to: Ukraine wins by surviving. Putin wins by surviving. Neither thinks the other can survive with the other surviving. China was winning by supplying arms and troops to Russia via North Korea. This makes Russia more dependent on China.

Now the US has shown the world China’s weapons not so good.

Stalemate.

[escapefromboston]

If Russia is winning I’d hate to see losing

[Seruzawa]

So after all this blood and treasure Zelensky is going to get the same deal that he could have gotten 4 years ago?

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Thank G_d the nukes were removed! I doubt the Ukrainians could have changed the targeting.

Of course, a threat to Germany, France and the UK might have kept the Deep State at bay...

[libh8er]

Owen Mathews… a former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek. He’s soaked the propaganda well.

[PGR88]

Impossible.

The Russians are stealing computer chips from washing-machines to make missiles, and their soldiers only have shovels to fight with.

Ukrainian babushkas are destroying Russian drones with broomsticks

Putin is dying of cancer, and the Russians are rioting in the streets.

Russia will sue for peace any day now.