Ukraine's Counteroffensive and Western Support

If one of the main goals is to bolster Western support for Ukraine, it isn’t obvious that the counteroffensive is succeeding.

Paul Poast puts a fairly positive spin on the minimal gains made during the Ukrainian counteroffensive:

To better assess the counteroffensive as it plays out, we must realize that it was never intended to be a decisive campaign. Even under the best of circumstances, there was little chance that Russian forces would collapse. But while such an outcome would be a welcome surprise, it is not the goal. The goal is to put Russia on its heels, bolster Western support [bold mine-DL] and ensure that Ukraine is in the best possible position if and when negotiations to end the war commence. By those terms, the counteroffensive is clearly succeeding.

If one of the main goals is to bolster Western support for Ukraine, it isn’t obvious that the counteroffensive is succeeding. There are now many more people in Washington and other Western capitals expressing grave concerns about how the war is going, and there has been a marked change in the tone of most Western coverage of the war. Some reliable supporters have begun to doubt that the war is winnable. There haven’t been any dramatic, sudden shifts in political backing for the war, but there are signs that support is eroding instead of being reinforced.