Ukraine may have to wait another year before launching a new counteroffensive against Russian forces, a NATO official told The New York Times.
During the NATO summit in Washington, DC, this week, members of the military alliance agreed to provide Ukraine with $40 billion in new military aid to fight the Russian invasion.
But the new aid will take weeks or even months to arrive at the front line, the Times reported, with much of the support long-term assistance.
As such, a senior US defense official told The Times that Ukraine would remain on the defensive for the next six months, while an unnamed senior NATO official told the outlet that the aid would enable Ukraine to push back against Russia in 2025.
Ukraine’s last, much-vaunted counteroffensive in 2023 failed to achieve much of a breakthrough.
At the beginning of 2024, Ukraine was on the back foot after Republicans in Congress blocked a new aid bill, and Ukraine’s forces began running low on ammunition and other supplies.
During that time, Ukraine’s European allies struggled to make up the shortfall and Russia was able to seize more territory in east Ukraine.
But the release of US aid in April allowed Ukraine to blunt Russia’s attacks.
Ukrainian officials have regularly complained that Western aid arrives piecemeal and is often too late to make a decisive difference on the battlefield.
The US has also placed strict limits on how Ukraine can use some weapons, banning Ukraine from using long-range missiles in attacks on Russia itself until recently, and then only allowing Ukraine to use them to target troops gathering for attacks across the border.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the summit on Thursday, appealed to the US to lift the restrictions.
Meanwhile, Western weapons that were highly effective during Ukraine’s drive that pushed Russia’s military back in 2022, such as GPS-guided long-range missiles, are notably less effective now due to improvements in Russian electronic warfare.
