EuropeAnalysis

Ukraine’s military fights fires on many fronts amid battlefield setbacks

Scandals, ‘leaks’, army recruitment woes and Trump fears compound concerns over trajectory of war

Ukrainian soldiers from the 82nd Brigade, who returned a few hours earlier from Russia's Kursk region, take shelter in a garage at a village near the border in Ukraine's northern Sumy region on January 8th. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/New York Times
Ukrainian soldiers from the 82nd Brigade, who returned a few hours earlier from Russia's Kursk region, take shelter in a garage at a village near the border in Ukraine's northern Sumy region on January 8th. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/New York Times
Daniel McLaughlin's picture
Daniel McLaughlin in Kyiv
Wed Jan 29 2025 - 13:50

Ukraine’s military is being pushed back on the battlefield and buffeted by corruption and leadership scandals, systemic problems with recruitment, and reported leaks of sensitive information, adding to the nation’s anxiety about the trajectory of the war with Russia and how new US president Donald Trump may try to end it.

The year has started badly for Ukraine in its eastern Donetsk region, with Russia seizing the town of Kurakhove, occupying most of the town of Velyka Novosilka and flanking the small city of Pokrovsk in a bid to force Kyiv’s troops to abandon it.

To the north, Moscow’s military is putting pressure on Ukrainian forces near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and has retaken about half of the 1,000sq km of land that Ukraine seized last summer in the Russian border province of Kursk.

The good news for Kyiv is being delivered by its long-range drone forces, which continue to inflict damaging and costly strikes on airfields, military bases, weapons factories and fuel facilities many hundreds of kilometres inside Russia.

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Yet those frequent successes cannot banish Ukrainians’ fears over how the war may develop this year, with their ground forces still outnumbered and outgunned, future US support uncertain and uncomfortable questions being asked about how Ukraine is managing its defence nearly three years into Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945.

Ukrainian investigators detained two generals and a colonel last week over serious failures in the defence of the Kharkiv region before and during a renewed Russian assault last May.

Earlier this month, the commander of the 155th brigade was detained for failing to report serious violations in his unit, which gained prominence last year when French president Emmanuel Macron committed his country to training and equipping it. A recent Ukrainian media investigation revealed that 1,700 of its troops – nearly 30 per cent of its personnel – had gone absent without leave, including dozens who fled while in France.

The Ukrainian military’s chief psychiatrist was arrested last week on suspicion of “illegal enrichment” estimated at more than $1 million since Russia launched its all-out invasion in February 2022. His wealth includes apartments, land and luxury cars, according to investigators, who found the equivalent of more than €150,000 in cash at his home.

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Some say these cases show that Ukraine is serious about tackling problems that have dogged it for decades, and president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has replaced senior military officers during the full-scale war: this week he named as the new commander of the eastern front major general Mykhailo Drapatyi, the overall chief of Ukraine’s ground forces and the man who led efforts to stop Russia’s assault on Kharkiv last spring.

However, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov is now under scrutiny for trying to oust Maryna Bezrukova as head of the defence procurement agency, in what he frames as a response to her “unsatisfactory” work but critics call a bid to curb the independence and transparency of a department that works closely with Kyiv’s allies.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy admitted this week that soldiers were not getting enough relief from the front. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy admitted this week that soldiers were not getting enough relief from the front. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA

In a statement, ambassadors from G7 states urged Ukraine to resolve the standoff “expeditiously and focus on keeping defence procurement going. Consistency with good governance principles and Nato recommendations is important to maintain the trust of the public and international partners”.

Ukraine is particularly sensitive to western criticism amid uncertainty over whether US support will continue under Mr Trump, who lambasted predecessor Joe Biden for sending tens of billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv and has pledged to end the war as soon as possible.

A Ukrainian media outlet this week published what it called a leak of a “100-day peace plan” supposedly drawn up by Mr Trump’s team to reach a ceasefire by Easter and a peace deal by May 9th. It was followed by claims in another Kyiv publication that Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, had warned deputies that if peace talks did not start by summer, then “very dangerous processes for the very existence of Ukraine may begin”.

Ukrainian officials said both stories were false, but the speculation heightened uncertainty in a nation that fears that its defences in the east and its support from the West could soon collapse, handing victory to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime.

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Bad news from the front and near-daily stories of corruption and incompetence in the military hamper Ukraine’s attempts to find new recruits to replenish badly depleted and weary units that have fought with barely a break for nearly three years.

Mr Zelenskiy admitted this week that soldiers were not getting enough relief from the front, but added: “If tomorrow, for example, half the army just went home, then we should have given up on the first day ... Because if half the people go home, Putin will kill us all.”

Ukraine’s military is reportedly working on ways to attract 18- to 25-year-olds who are currently exempt from mobilisation, but no wave of reinforcements is on the horizon.

“I don’t recall a single war when there were no shortages. I hope our enemies have even bigger shortages than we do,” Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said this month. “So we fight with what we’ve got.”