For the duration of the war in Ukraine, we’ve received regular military updates from Frank Ledwidge, an expert in military strategy at the University of Portsmouth. A few weeks ago Ledwidge got in touch to say that he was moving temporarily to Kyiv, where he is a visiting fellow with the leading Ukrainian thinktank the Transatlantic Dialogue Center.
This week we published his update and it made for sobering reading. He quoted a senior Ukrainian government official with whom he had shared a meal: “"We are losing this war,” he was told.
Ukraine has achieved some high-profile victories over Russia, especially when it comes to the battle for Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the north and west of the country. But the army is now bogged down in the Donbas region in the east and Ukraine’s southern coastline is in the invaders’ hands and its ports blockaded. Ledwidge’s message is that Ukraine needs more – lots more – advanced weaponry and it needs it soon. “While Ukraine is not winning, it is losing”, he concludes.
