Almost 100 days have now passed since the Congress passed $61 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, a measure that included a condition that required the Biden Administration to present to the legislative body a detailed strategy for continued U.S. support.

When the funding bill was passed with much fanfare on April 23, Section 504, page 32 included the following mandate:

“Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies, as appropriate, shall submit to 18 the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committees on 20 Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives a strategy regarding United States support for Ukraine against aggression by the Russian Federation: Provided, That such strategy shall be multi-year, establish specific and achievable objectives, define and prioritize United States national security interests…”

It is now August and There is still no sign on the part of the Biden Administration of any intention to submit such a strategy to Congress. This inevitably leads to the suspicion that no such strategy in fact exists. It also suggests that without a massive change of mindset within the administration, it is not even possible to hold — let alone make public —serious and honest internal discussions on the subject, as these would reveal the flawed and empty assumptions on which much of present policy is based. (...)

In May 2022, just three months into the Russia-Ukraine War, I wrote a three-part series in which I identified the military strategy that would give Ukraine the best chance of seeking out some sort of tactical success over Russia. It wouldn’t have guaranteed success, I warned, but it was a viable path. As it turned out, Ukraine did virtually none of what I recommended while—ironically—Russia successfully employed several key elements of the path I laid out.

Now, as we approach the two-and-a-half-year mark of the war, and Ukraine is being pushed back on all fronts, I am going to reprise my effort and lay out a realistic but tough path by which Ukraine might yet steal some military success from Russia.

I will warn from the outset that there is no path, however well-resourced, by which Ukraine can inflict an outright military defeat on Russia in the foreseeable future. Russia is too big, too well-resourced, and too well-manned for Ukraine to beat. Yet, if handled deftly, sometimes even tactical defeats by a weaker opponent can be leveraged into strategic success. The following plan represents such an opportunity. (...)

NATO only wants to seek a victory for Ukraine and a loss for Russia. However, sober analysis shows that this is an unattainable outcome either now or in the future. If the West refuses to submit to reality, the most likely outcome for Ukraine is a military defeat that could include even the eventual loss of Odesa and Kharkiv and more territory than even Putin’s June 2024 ultimatum.

The narrative of totally unified Ukrainian opinion is premised on polls from the earliest days of the war showing nearly unanimous Ukrainian support for the government and its handling of the war effort. This seeming consensus has steadily eroded since the peak of Ukraine’s battlefield successes in 2022, when 70 percent of survey respondents affirmed that Ukraine “should continue fighting until it wins the war.” That number dropped to 60 percent in the summer of 2023, according to Gallup. Polling since the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 offensive shows that 44 percent of Ukrainians favor entering into talks with Russia and only 48 percent—still a plurality but, notably, no longer a majority—believe Ukraine should fight on. Other recent polling shows that even in Kyiv, where Ukraine’s elite and bureaucracy is concentrated and political investment in the war effort is at its highest, complete confidence in Ukrainian victory is weakening.

Tellingly, recent surveys—including a new poll from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace— suggest that the share of Ukrainians open to a negotiated settlement has dramatically risen over the past year and, if present trends hold, is well on the way to becoming a majority-held view.

These findings are reinforced by a decline in Zelensky’s approval rating and loss of public trust in the national TV Marathon, a platform of media channels that report on the war from a pro-government stance. Ukrainian bloggers with much more critical perspectives on Kyiv’s handling of the war are amassing large audiences on social media.

Another key metric of public investment in the nation’s war effort is support for mobilization. A plurality of Ukrainian men said in a February poll that they are not prepared to fight. One Ukrainian soldier told the BBC late last year, “It’s a total nightmare. A year ago, I wouldn’t have said that, but now, sorry, I’m fed up. Everyone who wanted to volunteer for war came a long time ago—it’s too hard now to tempt people with money. Now we’re getting those who didn’t manage to escape the draft. You’ll laugh at this, but some of our marines can’t even swim.”

Kyiv took the drastic step earlier this year of suspending consular services for men aged between 18 and 60 to contend with military recruitment problems. A staggering 11,000 Ukrainian men have opted out of participating in the war by illegally crossing into Romania, one of seven countries bordering Ukraine.

A closer look at the views of those who are not being captured by these polls suggests a likelihood that there is far more dissent from the Zelensky government’s maximalist war aims than it may appear. (...)