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Russia has recaptured half of the territory it lost to Ukraine in Kursk, a region central to Volodymyr Zelensky’s plan to defeat Vladimir Putin.

A senior Russian commander from Chechnya said that an estimated 50,000 troops were pushing back Ukrainian forces, who either had to flee or “end up in the cauldron”.

“Approximately half of the territory that was occupied by the enemy has already been liberated,” said Major General Apty Alaudinov.

Well-connected Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers have been reporting since Saturday that Moscow’s troops have punched through sectors of Ukraine’s front lines in Kursk.

Mr Zelensky has insisted that the situation has stabilised but the US-based Institute for the Study of War, which holds staunchly pro-Ukraine views, said that it has seen “visual evidence” that Russia has recaptured 46 per cent of its territory in Kursk.

According to some commentators, seasonal rain has turned the ground to mud in the Kursk region, handing Russia an advantage because its forces use more tracked vehicles than Ukrainian troops do.

Boris Rozhin, a pro-Kremlin blogger, posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers pulling an armoured car out of a rain-soaked patch of forest next to a water-logged, mud-coated track.

“Ukrainian forces are doing a lot of whining about how they have a lot of wheeled vehicles, while Russian forces are betting on tracked vehicles,” he said.

The muddy season in Russia and Ukraine is called “rasputitsa” and is renowned for bogging down vehicles on tracks and fields, making travel slow-going.

Emil Kastehelmi, an open-source research analyst at the Finland-based Black Bird Group, also said that the terrain that Ukrainian forces were trying to defend in Kursk favoured the attacker.

“The area is mostly dominated by large open fields with a limited natural cover,” he said, describing Ukraine’s western flank. “Especially without proper fortifications, defending it can be difficult.”

By Mr Kastehelmi’s reckoning, Ukraine has lost at least a third of the territory that it had once held in the Kursk region.

Ukraine launched its daring incursion into Russia in August. Catching Russian soldiers by surprise, Ukrainian forces quickly captured a region around the town of Sudzha measuring roughly 450sq miles, half the size of Dorset.

The invasion boosted morale among Ukrainian civilians but some analysts warned that instead of drawing Russian forces away from the front line, it had weakened Ukraine’s defences.

Last month, George Beebe, the director of grand strategy at the US-based Quincy Institute, said the Kursk operation was already looking like a “blunder”.

He said: “There seems to be a great deal of scepticism about what this incursion is going to accomplish.”

Regardless, Mr Zelensky has made holding on to Ukraine’s Kursk salient central to his ‘Victory Plan’, which he presented to Sir Keir Starmer last week.

But Russian forces have accelerated their attacks along the front line in Donbas since Ukraine invaded Kursk, and on Tuesday pro-Russia officials in occupied Donetsk said that they had now captured two-thirds of Toretsk, a key front-line town with a pre-war population of 34,000 people.

In the northern section of the front line in east Ukraine, Ukrainian officials have also ordered the evacuation of civilians from the city of Kupyansk on the banks of the Oskil river because of Russian advances.

Oleg Sinegubov, the head of the Kharkiv region , said: “The military situation is deteriorating and we cannot ensure the heating season, the provision of electricity, and humanitarian assistance. The enemy is shelling critical infrastructure.”

All aged under 40 and with two years of fighting experience, the six men held their ground despite a barrage of rockets and killed over 100 Russian soldiers, said their commander in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“When they rotated out, they were trembling. They hadn’t slept or rested,” their commander said near the frontline south-east of Pokrovsk, a city Russia is seeking to occupy. “But those guys did their job and held the line.”

The troops who replaced them were less successful. Of the eight soldiers rotated in, only two had previous combat experience. All six new conscripts — most over the age of 40 — were killed or wounded within a week, forcing the unit to retreat.

Outmanned and outgunned since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s troops have valiantly defended their territory from Russian bombardments, ground assaults and dirty tactics such as employing chemical weapons, which the US has said amount to war crimes.

Kyiv’s forces inflicted huge losses on the Russian army this year and proved they were still capable of seizing the initiative when they invaded Russia’s southern Kursk region.

But despite these achievements, Ukraine’s troops and their commanders are growing concerned over manpower problems, particularly the quality of new recruits and the speed at which they are injured or killed in combat.

The Ukrainian infantry is most acutely affected: its troops are grappling with exhaustion and flagging morale, leading some to abandon their positions and allow Russia to capture more land, according to frontline commanders.

Along the front in Donetsk, four commanders, a deputy commander and nearly a dozen soldiers from four Ukrainian brigades told the Financial Times that the new conscripts lack basic combat skills, motivation and often abandon their positions when they come under fire.

The commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.

“When the new guys get to the position, a lot of them run away at the first shell explosion,” said a deputy commander in Ukraine’s 72nd mechanised brigade fighting near the eastern city of Vuhledar, a key bulwark that the Russians are attempting to flank.

This situation poses a significant challenge for Ukraine as it fights on the new front in Kursk while at the same time trying to fend off Moscow’s forces in its east. Kyiv is also pressing western partners for more assistance to help it turn the tide of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to the US this week to try to get the Biden administration behind his “victory plan” and force Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table sooner rather than later. But to strike a deal with the Russian president that would not amount to capitulation by Kyiv, Zelenskyy needs greater western support, including unprecedented security guarantees, to help his struggling troops on the frontline.

“We are in desperate need of strong soldiers,” said a commander who goes by the nom de guerre “Lawyer” because he had worked as an attorney before the war.

Senior Ukrainian officials said a recent mobilisation drive had allowed Ukraine to draft about 30,000 soldiers a month since May, when a new conscription law came into force. That is on par with the number of troops Russia has been able to recruit by offering large bonuses and generous salaries.

But commanders on the ground and military analysts have warned that the newly drafted troops are not highly motivated, are psychologically and physically unprepared — and are being killed at an alarming rate as a result.

One commander, whose unit is defending positions around Kurakhove, where Russian forces have made gains in recent weeks, said that “some guys freeze [because] they are too afraid to shoot the enemy, and then they are the ones who leave in body bags or severely wounded”.

After difficult combat stints, many new conscripts go Awol, commanders said. Some return so shell-shocked and exhausted that they are checked into psychiatric wards.

Several bungled rotations in recent months have led to Russia making easier gains than expected towards Pokrovsk.

“We are most vulnerable during rotations,” said the deputy commander. “That’s when Russia is able to advance . . . The infantry is crucial to our defence.”

Seasoned soldiers “are being killed off too quickly”, said another commander on the eastern front, only to be replaced by mostly older men without experience and in worse physical shape.

Age is a key concern — the average person in Ukraine’s military is 45. Of about 30 infantry troops in a unit, said the deputy commander of the 72nd brigade, on average half were in their mid-40s, only five were under 30 and the rest were 50 or older.

“As infantry, you need to run, you need to be strong, you need to carry heavy equipment,” he added. “It’s hard to do that if you aren’t young.”

But the problems start long before the recruits reach the battlefield, the commanders and analysts said.

A former Ukrainian officer who operates the analytical group Frontelligence Insight blamed “long-standing systemic problems that were left unaddressed for years”. Largely composed of mobilised former civilians, the Ukrainian army is led by officers and generals who started their career in Soviet times and had “never been in combat”, he said.

Commanders lay part of the blame on military recruiters: “It would be wise to pay more attention to each person’s characteristics and background to see where the guys best fit instead of sending everyone to the infantry,” said Mykhailo Temper, a battery commander in the 21st battalion of Ukraine’s Separate Presidential Brigade.

“You literally see all layers of society represented [in the infantry],” he added. “Not everyone is fit for the front.”

Temper, who is also the founder of a freeze-dried food company popular among outdoor adventurers and soldiers, said entrepreneurs like himself were often best equipped to serve in commander and officer roles, while some of his best trench fighters were former miners and factory workers.

Convicts released to serve in the army are also appreciated for their dedication and ability to adapt to the conflict zone, according to several commanders.

But every commander emphasised what they felt was inadequate military training for the new wave of draftees.

Temper said “trainers themselves don’t have real battle experience so they aren’t teaching what the newbies need to know to fight and, more importantly, to stay alive”.

Instead, conscripts were still receiving “Soviet-style” training, where “the army just passes everyone with good marks and sends them to the front”, said the deputy commander. New troops rarely practised with live rounds because of ammunition shortages, he added.

“Some of them don’t even know how to hold their rifles. They peel more potatoes than they shoot bullets,” he said, adding that he had bought paintball equipment to replace rifles and live rounds so that new recruits could get more practice without wasting precious ammunition.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said this month that he had ordered improvements to the quality of training for new recruits by selecting “motivated instructors with combat experience” and raised the possibility of setting up an instructor school.

But the commander of an artillery unit said the deaths of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers over the course of the war were taking a toll: “If there are not enough people to fight, there are not enough people to teach.”

The commanders all said they tried to rotate troops every three to six days, depending on the intensity and dynamics of the fighting. But sometimes those stints can last for two weeks, especially when Russian drones spot the rotation and attack soldiers when they are at their most vulnerable.

Because Ukraine has no law on demobilisation, the soldiers are rarely allowed to leave the war zone to rest or visit family.

“Skif”, commander of a drone reconnaissance unit, first signed a contract when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. He said that signing up for the army or being conscripted “is a one-way ticket” to the war.

The deputy commander echoed this, saying that he and his troops have not been reconstituted since the full-scale invasion.

“No rehabilitation time, no relief,” he said. “I see our guys when they leave the frontline . . . they are suffering burnout.”

Ukraine should ban children from leaving the country, so that they are forced to experience the hardships of the conflict with Russia and grow up hating the enemy, a radical Ukrainian politician has proposed.

Dmitry Korchinsky, a veteran Ukrainian nationalist, who heads the far right Brotherhood party, said major restrictions should be introduced because "we are not fighting for democracy, we are fighting for survival."

"The survival of the nation requires us to ban not only fighting-age men, but also children from leaving," he told the Great Lviv news outlet on Sunday. "I understand that keeping kids abroad during war is less stressful for many. But we realize that those children will not come back to Ukraine."

"Ukrainian children must not hear Polish or German in their environment. They must be brought up to the sound of air sirens, grow up here hating the enemy. They must mature here, in Ukraine," Korchinsky added.

Kiev prohibited males of military-service age from leaving the country without special permits soon after the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands have fled, some risking their lives to do so illegally.

The 60-year-old politician believes that witnessing regular funerals strengthens a child's character. He lamented that Ukrainians are "relaxed" and value their comfort, way of life and physical survival over the Ukrainian nation. He described speaking Russian as a major offense for Ukrainians.

"If somebody does not understand that he must love Ukraine, we will make him love Ukraine, whether he likes it or not. We'll force him to stay and either fight or support the front," he said.

Korchinsky is married to Oksana Korchinskaya, a former member of parliament from the Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko, another minor political force. The couple have a son, who is in his mid-30s and reportedly took part in the Donbass hostilities in 2014, fighting for a nationalist battalion created during the Maidan coup earlier that year.

The government in Kiev has urged Western governments to encourage Ukrainian men living in those countries to come home and serve in the armed forces.

Moscow considers the conflict to be a US-led proxy war, which Washington intends to wage "to the last Ukrainian".

The pilot, Oleksiy Mes, died while helping to repel a massive Russian missile attack on Monday, the officials said. Initial reports indicate the jet wasn’t shot down by enemy fire, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon referred questions to the Ukrainian Air Force for comment. The Ukrainian Air Force acknowledged the crash and pilot’s death in a statement Thursday.

Ukraine used the jets for the first time in combat to shoot down Russian missiles during the strikes this week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Mes, was killed in combat while helping repel the missile attack Monday. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said contact had been lost with the jet while it was approaching its next target.

A person close to the Ukrainian military said the cause of the crash was unknown and an investigation was under way. The person described Mes as a hero who successfully shot down multiple Russian missiles on Monday before the crash.

Mes, call sign “Moonfish,” was one of Kyiv’s first pilots to be trained on the F-16. He was one of the better known Ukrainian pilots, appearing frequently in the media and visiting Washington to lobby the U.S. to send Ukraine the jet fighters.

Mes met personally with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including in 2022 with then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.).

Mes often appeared with another prominent Ukrainian pilot, Andriy Pilshchykov, call sign “Juice,” who died in a training accident on Aug. 25, 2023. Two other pilots were killed in that incident, a midair collision.
The news that one of Ukraine’s few F-16s has been destroyed, and one of its most well-known pilots killed, is a major blow to Kyiv, which had pleaded for the jets for months before President Biden gave the green light for European countries to transfer the aircraft last year.

Kyiv hopes the advanced Western aircraft will give its forces an edge on the battlefield, particularly to shoot down incoming Russian missiles and help protect troops on the front lines. But the F-16s, many of which are secondhand and have decades of flying time already, are vulnerable to Russian air defense missiles and present a high-value target for Moscow’s forces.

U.S. officials also have warned about the dangers of sending pilots inexperienced on F-16s into combat. While Mes and other Ukrainian pilots now flying the F-16 are skilled in flying Soviet jets against the Russians, they went through an accelerated training course to learn to operate the American jets.

A newly minted American F-16 pilot typically wouldn’t fly in combat for many months after completing their training, spending additional time flying in-country with their unit.

A second U.S. official noted that the training curriculum for Ukrainian F-16s was “not standard,” noting that the program was focused on specific missions they would likely face in combat. “There’s still, very frankly, risk there,” the official said.

Kyiv hopes to have more Ukrainian pilots on the battlefield flying F-16s in the near future. A number of pilots are undergoing training at sites in Europe and the U.S.

Popular Pro-Kremlin military analysts and Telegram channels claimed that the plane was destroyed on the ground during Russia’s Monday missile attack. The Ukrainian military described the attack, which involved 127 missiles and 109 strike drones, as the biggest since the war’s initial days.

Zelensky announced Aug. 4 that the first of 80 promised F-16s had arrived in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force didn’t provide numbers, but another U.S. official said six aircraft had arrived and Ukraine has six pilots trained to fly them. Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway have said they would provide the aircraft.

Ukraine has been urging its allies for months to send them the jets, claiming they would help defend against long-range strikes and bring about a swift end to the war.

Citing Ukrainian and Western officials, the Washington Post reported that not only are there far too few trained pilots to give Ukraine an edge but the jets can not immediately be used on the front line due to improving Russian air defences.

Several European countries have been involved in the programme to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s, which includes language training in Britain. But the project had limited spots and was marred by delays, the unnamed officials told the Post.

The officials said that Ukraine would only receive one squadron of F-16s this year, roughly 20 fighter jets, far fewer than it had been hoping for.

Russian military bloggers were quick to mock the situation, particularly for all the hype over F-16s and the hope they could change the course of the war.

Fighterbomber, a Telegram channel that specialises in aviation, said that six pilots meant Ukraine would only be able to deploy two fighter jets at the same time because “a pilot can’t work around the clock”.

“Two pilots are at most 10 combat sorties per day in total,” Fighterbomber said. “For the whole of Ukraine, 10 F-16 sorties is nothing.”

For two years, Ukraine has been asking for F-16 fighter jets to counter Russia’s domination of the skies. In total, 80 F-16 fighter jets have been promised to Ukraine by Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium.

But Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian commanders have complained that like with other weapons pledges, it is too little, too late. The officials said that when the much-vaunted F-16s do finally arrive in Ukraine, they won’t be the game-changers as hoped.

One reason is that Ukrainian commanders have said they will be deployed in a defensive capacity because Russia still controls the skies and has set up air defence systems across the front line, making it too risky to send out F-16s.

“We will not use it too close to the Russians” due to the threat of air defences, a Ukrainian official told the Washington Post.

Basing the F-16s in Ukraine has also become a problem. F-16s need a long, clean runway, free of stones or debris. Over the past few weeks, Russia has been bombing the only suitable bases.

Ukrainian frustrations over the limited impact of the F-16s come as relations between Kyiv and Washington fray. US media reported that earlier this month, the Kremlin phoned Washington to warn that Ukraine was planning a covert operation that would trigger a bigger war. Furious and alarmed, the US reportedly ordered Kyiv to call off the attack.

On the battlefield, the Russian Ministry of Defence said that it had captured another village in Donbas.

Its forces have been making slow but steady progress over the past nine months but Russian military bloggers said that Ukraine’s robust defences, aided by its superior drones, meant they were struggling to break through.

“The incomplete (to put it mildly) technical readiness of our troops to confront hundreds of enemy first-person view drones significantly slows the advance of the Russian Army,” said Two Majors, the Russian military blogging channel.

Never was there a more clear-cut case of “commentator’s curse” than when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated on a sunny Kyiv day exactly five years ago.

The TV narrator’s inference was that, after a landslide election victory with 73% of the vote, it could only go downhill for him.

While his approval ratings have inevitably waned, Volodymyr Zelensky has been able to use his enduring appeal, along with a desire for stability, to extend his term in office.

In peacetime it would have expired, and an election would have been called. But the martial law brought in with Russia’s full-scale invasion means that can’t happen, and there’s broad public support for that too.

“For the Ukrainians, the priority is to win the war and then have an election,” explains Anton Hrushetskyi, the head of Kyiv’s International Institute of Sociology.

“Therefore, they don’t question the legitimacy of Zelensky.”

Moscow, unsurprisingly, has done just that. But it would also jump on a mid-war election where Ukraine’s wartime leader would be heavily scrutinised.

“We see these narratives from Russia and how it tries to impose on Western minds the thought that Ukraine is not a democracy,” explains Anton.

After a high of 90% following the full-scale invasion, today around 65% of Ukrainians still trust President Zelensky to guide them through these times.

There are also immense practical hurdles with a potential election, not least with Russia occupying a fifth of the country and at least seven million Ukrainians being forced to live abroad. There are also hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting on the front line.

“There is no alternative president,” states the renowned Ukrainian author Andriy Kurkov.

Only a few months ago Ukraine’s then-head of the armed forces Valeriy Zaluzhny was touted as a potential rival to Mr Zelensky. However, after being sacked and appointed as the country’s ambassador to the UK, he’s stayed quiet on the political front, for now.

“To become president in a show business manner and then find yourself in the middle of a war, there is nothing easy or funny about it,” says Andriy.

Back in 2022, after the Russians invaded Ukraine, the author likened Ukraine’s leader to James Bond when he turned down offers to evacuate and championed his country’s cause. So, does he feel the same now?

“He looks like a very tired James Bond,” says Andriy. “Much older, and a bit grumpy.”

“Even if we had elections tomorrow, it will be Zelensky again. Only at the end of the war will attitudes change and will people ask questions they’ve been saving for peacetime.”

Andriy believes the president’s continued support is fuelled by a desire for stability, despite some frustrations.

Watching old footage of Mr Zelenksy being sworn in is like viewing a different Ukraine. The comedian-turned-president looks fresher faced. He enthusiastically greets crowds and even jumps to kiss a man on the forehead.

No stubble, no stern expression, just an excited grin. You also don’t see people cheer any more.

“It was a very exciting day,” admits Oleksandr Danyluk who was in the new president’s team. He’d go on to be secretary of the National Security and Defence Council before leaving a year later to become an opponent of his former boss.

“None of us knew what was ahead. We didn’t have the slightest idea.”

Mr Danyluk’s political differences with the president started to mount. One of them centred on how best to combat Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine.

The president believed he could sit with Vladimir Putin and negotiate. Mr Danyluk now claims he felt the country should have been preparing for an unavoidable war.

“We should have readied ourselves much better, but those early years were lost after the full-scale invasion, right?” says Mr Danyluk, who concedes there are few better at building international support for Ukraine.

“President Zelensky will lead this war one way or another, whether somebody likes it or not, whether he likes it or not, that’s his destiny.”

Last year, President Zelensky said it was “irresponsible” to talk about elections and called for unity. Most in the country seem to agree.

The time for a political reckoning will come. Just, it seems, not now.

Ukraine’s air force is expected to take delivery of the first tranche of a dozen aircraft in July after Ukrainian pilots have been trained and the country’s airfields prepared.

Before their arrival, the Western warplanes had been held up by some as a potential war-winner that could turn the tide of the conflict in Kyiv’s favour.

“Often, we just don’t get the weapons systems at the time we need them – they come when they’re no longer relevant,” a Ukrainian high-ranking officer told the Politico news website.

“Every weapon has its own right time. F-16s were needed in 2023; they won’t be right for 2024.”

Ukrainian forces are being beaten back by their Russian enemy across almost the entire 600-mile front line – a situation blamed on worsening ammunition shortages, partly caused by a blocked $60 billion US aid package.

This has increased calls by Kyiv for more traditional weapons, such as air defence interceptors, artillery howitzers and shells.

“We need howitzers and shells, hundreds of thousands of shells, and rockets,” the officer said, estimating that Ukraine needed four million shells and two million drones.

Ahead of his arrival in Brussels for a meeting to mark the 75th anniversary of Nato, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, called for Kyiv’s Western allies to prioritise sending more US-made Patriot air defence batteries.

“Seven Patriot systems would be optimal, but let me be modest,” he said. “With five Patriot batteries, we can defend the main industrial cities against Russian missiles.”

The US, Netherlands and Germany have so far contributed several of the systems, which are estimated to cost about $1 billion each.

“And once we’ve taken the threat away, the Patriots go back to where they were stationed.”

But after a meeting with his Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski, Mr Kuleba upgraded his demand to “all Patriot batteries available around the world that can be provided to Ukraine must be delivered to Ukraine”.

“Ukraine is currently the only country in the world that defends itself against ballistic missile attacks almost every day,” the Ukrainian official added.

At their meeting in Brussels, Nato foreign ministers are discussing a $100 billion, five-year military aid package for Ukraine.

The Telegraph reported on Tuesday that the scheme, dubbed Nato Mission Ukraine, was being drawn up to shield Kyiv from the “winds of political change” in the United States.

Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, told reporters on Wednesday: “What is obvious is that we need new and more money for Ukraine and we need it over many years.”

He went on to warn again that the political dispute in the US Congress was helping Vladimir Putin’s forces seize Ukrainian territory.

“That’s one of the reasons why the Ukrainians have to ration the number of artillery shells, why they have problems standing up against the Russian force with overwhelming military power because they’re able to outgun them with more ammunition and more artillery,” Mr Stoltenberg said.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has warned Russia is preparing to mobilise 300,000 soldiers by June.

The move expands the number of civilians the army can mobilise into its ranks to fight under martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The bill had been on Zelenskiy’s table since it was approved by lawmakers in May 2023, and it was not immediately clear what prompted him to sign it. Parliament has been discussing a separate bill to broadly tighten draft rules for months.

Zelenskiy separately signed a second bill requiring men who were given military waivers on disability grounds to undergo another medical assessment.

A third bill he signed aimed to create an online database of those eligible for military service. Both those bills could potentially help the military draft more fighters.

A string of strict measures set out in an earlier draft of that bill were gutted following a public outcry.

Ukrainian troops face challenges on the battlefield, with a shortage of ammunition supplies and vital funding from the US blocked by Republicans in Congress for months, as well as the European Union failing to deliver promised ammunition on time.

The signing of the mobilisation age legislation was not immediately announced by the president’s office. Parliament merely updated the entry for the bill on its website to read: “returned with the signature of the president of Ukraine”.

Zelenskiy said late last year that he would sign the bill only if he was given a strong enough argument of the need to do so.

The Ukrainian leader said in December that the military had proposed mobilising up to 500,000 more Ukrainians into the armed forces, something he said the then-commander of the armed forces had asked for.

Since then, Ukraine has changed the head of the armed forces and the new chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last week that the figure was no longer up to date and that it had been “significantly reduced” after a review of resources.

Zelenskiy has warned that Russia may plan another offensive in the coming months, and Kyiv’s troops have been scaling up their efforts to build up strong defensive fortifications along a sprawling front line.

With the initial shock of the invasion long gone, Ukraine has faced a significant reduction in the flow of volunteer fighters and numerous cases of draft evasion have been reported.