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<\/p>\nDonald Trump this week boosted Ukraine\u2019s air defences with new Patriot batteries, threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire, and even reportedly gave tacit approval to more Ukrainian strikes on Moscow. Trump\u2019s newfound support for Ukraine is a welcome lifeline. The question is whether his help will be enough to stop Russia\u2019s relentless attacks before Ukraine is engulfed in a critical military, political and social crisis that threatens to destroy it from within.<\/p>\n
Putin chose war over peace this spring because his spies and generals told him that Ukraine is on the brink of collapse. Alarmingly, they may be right. Ukraine is running out of fighting men, its frontline soldiers are exhausted and US military support has narrowed to focus on air defence. The Kyiv government is racked by corruption scandals and purges, public faith in their future and in their leaders is tanking and pressure to make peace at almost any price is growing.<\/p>\n
In many ways the most remarkable thing about the conflict is that Ukraine still fights on despite the merciless and titanic punishment that Russia has meted out on its soldiers, civilians and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u2018If the war continues soon there will be no Ukraine left to fight for,\u2019 one former senior official in Zelensky\u2019s administration tells me. They now believe their former boss is \u2018prolonging the war to hold on to power\u2019. Even once-staunch pro-Zelensky cheerleaders such as Mariia Berlinska, head of the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Centre, a prominent Ukrainian volunteer movement, express despair. \u2018We are hanging over the abyss,\u2019 Berlinska said recently. \u2018Ukraine is an expendable pawn in an American game\u2026 Trump, Putin, Xi [will] spend us like small change if they need to.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ukrainian morale, admirably high for much of the war, is collapsing. Back in October 2022, even after six months of violence and bloodshed, 88 per cent of Ukrainians believed that they would be a \u2018flourishing country inside the EU\u2019 within a decade. Now 47 per cent think that \u2018Ukraine will be a depopulated country with a ruined economy\u2019. A separate survey found that 70 per cent of Ukrainians also believe their leaders are using the war to enrich themselves.<\/p>\n
Nothing is more corrosive to wartime morale than the idea that a nation\u2019s leaders are stealing as its people fight and die. \u2018Corruption kills and loses wars,\u2019 says Kyrylo Shevchenko, a former head of Ukraine\u2019s Central Bank, who is in exile in Austria after being charged with corruption in 2023. In recent weeks, Ukraine has been engulfed in corruption scandals. Two deputy prime ministers, minister for national unity Oleksiy Chernyshov and minister for reconstruction Oleksandr Kubrakov, have been investigated for embezzlement and treason, and other charges. Both deny wrongdoing. Zelensky has also repeatedly tried to sack Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence, allegedly because of his growing popularity. Only pressure from the US embassy in Kyiv prevented the sacking of one of Ukraine\u2019s most popular generals, a serving senior European diplomat with knowledge of the case tells me.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMajor General Kyrylo Budanov in 2023 Getty Images<\/p>\n
The recent spate of arrests and searches against Zelensky loyalists suggest serious political infighting at the heart of the Kyiv government \u2013 and also a reckless readiness to take down prominent critics both inside and outside the state, regardless of how it looks to the outside world. Perhaps the most shocking of all the recent arrests is that of Vitaliy Shabunin, one of Ukraine\u2019s most prominent anti-corruption activists, who has been charged with evading military service and fraud. Shabunin, the chair of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre executive board and a leading watchdog of military corruption, attacked the government soon after this arrest.<\/p>\n
\nNothing is more corrosive to morale than the idea that a nation\u2019s leaders are stealing as its people fight and die<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2018Taking advantage of the war, Volodymyr Zelensky is taking the first but confident steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,\u2019 Shabunin wrote on Telegram. He has been a critic of a proposed law on defence procurement that would allow the Defence Ministry to exempt chosen companies implementing government contracts from criminal liability.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the administration has blocked the appointment of a new independent head of the Bureau of Economic Security, a powerful law enforcement agency with an uncomfortable track record of prosecuting Zelensky\u2019s political opponents.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ukraine has two enemies, two Vladimirs: Zelensky and Putin,\u2019 says a former Ukrainian cabinet minister, once a strong Zelensky supporter. \u2018Putin is destroying Ukraine from [the] outside, but Zelensky is destroying it from within by destroying its will to fight and its morale. Human rights are being trampled on, there is pressure against political opponents, rich and influential people who could support opposition are being expropriated and opposition media is silenced. And the irony is that this Putinification of Ukraine is being funded by the West.\u2019<\/p>\n
Under the terms of a wartime state of emergency, more than 5,000 Ukrainians have come under sanctions and had their property frozen. The measure, first invented to prevent Russia-connected politicians, media groups and oligarchs from influencing Ukrainian politics, is now widely used to silence opponents of the regime, say critics, as well as to police the media. \u2018Sanctions have led to the closure of three YouTube channels belonging to Zelensky\u2019s critics in the past month,\u2019 says Shevchenko. \u2018Censorship often shields authoritarian leaders, and unchecked power breeds dictatorship.\u2019<\/p>\n
Zelensky\u2019s term of office formally expired in May last year. While many argue it\u2019s unfeasible to hold elections in wartime, there is frustration that Zelensky has exiled key potential opponents and imprisoned and sanctioned others. \u2018In May 1940 Churchill invited the leader of the opposition Attlee to be his deputy and united all of parliament in one government,\u2019 notes opposition MP Oleksiy Goncharenko. \u2018Zelensky has done the opposite, he is holding on to power by all means possible.\u2019 Goncharenko sparked controversy by comparing Zelensky to Kim Jong-un and Ukraine to North Korea.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, resentment, resistance and anger are rising at aggressive measures taken by the authorities to press-gang military-age men into the army \u2013 a process known as \u2018busification\u2019. Unlike the Russian army, which is made up of contract soldiers, Ukraine has instituted full mobilisation of men over 26 not engaged in vital civilian work.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s social media is filled with daily videos of men being bundled into vans by recruitment officers, sometimes at gunpoint. Yet many of those forcibly recruited seem to have little desire to fight. In the first six months of this year, Ukraine\u2019s Prosecutor\u2019s Office reported that it had opened 107,672 new criminal cases for desertion. Since 2022 some 230,804 such criminal cases have been instigated, suggesting that more soldiers have deserted the Ukrainian army than there are fighting men in today\u2019s British, French and German armies combined.<\/p>\n
Those who remain at the front are exhausted. Mobilised Ukrainian soldiers serve until the end of hostilities, meaning that some have been fighting continuously for three-and-a-half years. A draft law releasing military personnel from service after 36 months was squashed by the government last year for fear that the retiring personnel could not be replaced. No men aged 18 to 60 have been allowed to leave the country since February 2022 without special permission.<\/p>\n
\nMany Zelensky allies fear that they could be prosecuted or exiled if they leave power<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Since the Russian invasion, more than 6.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, with a further eight million internally displaced. That\u2019s equivalent to 40 per cent of its working-age population. Runaway inflation is impoverishing ever-larger swathes of the country. Today 8.8 million people in Ukraine are living below the poverty line, up from six million before the war.<\/p>\n
Last week governments and businesses gathered in Rome for the third annual Ukraine Recovery Conference. The centrepiece of the conference was meant to be the unveiling of a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund that US investment giant BlackRock has been working on since 2022. But earlier this year BlackRock announced that it was shuttering the fund \u2018due to a lack of interest\u2019. Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz, Italy\u2019s Giorgia Meloni and Poland\u2019s Donald Tusk were there to make the usual pledges of support. Yet in terms of concrete aid, the EU was able to rustle up just \u20ac2.3 billion \u2013 just a drop in the bucket compared with the World Bank\u2019s estimate of $524 billion to restore Ukraine\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u2018All of the political elite understands that Ukraine needs a new system of government to stabilise [the] situation,\u2019 says the former Zelensky cabinet minister. \u2018People want to stop living in fear. But instead of asking how to help a transition of power in Ukraine, the EU is closing its eyes.\u2019 Many of Zelensky allies, including some of the country\u2019s top ministers, fear that they could be prosecuted or exiled if they leave power. Zelensky\u2019s team have \u2018made many enemies\u2019 in Ukraine\u2019s political class, explains a senior European diplomat who attended the Rome conference. \u2018They fear that their future is exile, or jail\u2019 \u2013 which, in turn, only increases the \u2018temptation to line their pockets while they can\u2019.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s newly announced Patriot package is welcome news. So are Europe\u2019s continued promises of unwavering support. But none of Ukraine\u2019s allies can really help with the country\u2019s chronic manpower shortage or with the deepening crisis of legitimacy that Zelensky faces. Most worrying of all, no outsiders can reverse the spiral of arrests of former regime loyalists, crackdown on opposition members and shutdown of media outlets that are doing so much to erode Ukrainians\u2019 faith in the war effort and in Zelensky\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
This article was updated on 21 July 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump this week boosted Ukraine\u2019s air defences with new Patriot batteries, threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[332,657,658],"class_list":{"0":"post-337060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-russia","9":"tag-ukraine","10":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}