Europe needs to step up support for Ukraine

By Christopher Lockwood

IT SEEMS CLEAR that, barring a last-minute miracle, Ukraine’s counter-offensive, once the source of so much optimism not just in Kyiv but across the West, failed in 2023—and badly so. After five months of bloody and expensive effort, the results by early November were minimal. No major town had been taken, and only around 400 square km (154 square miles) of territory had been liberated, less than 0.1% of Ukraine’s total land mass. Russia still occupies about 18% of Ukraine, around half of which it took in 2014, when it annexed Crimea and grabbed the eastern Donbas; the rest is what is left of the territory it seized after the invasion of February 2022.