So much has the world’s attention focused on Iran lately that it’s been easy to lose track of what’s going on in the much larger war in Ukraine. A great deal has changed there since the start of the year, demanding some new approaches from Kyiv’s European allies.
After a brutal winter, Ukraine has managed to stabilize the front over the last few months, on occasion even making net territorial gains. Overall, the nature of the battlefield has changed in ways that blunt Russia’s overwhelming advantages in manpower, artillery and armor — and all this, just as distractions in Iran have stalled the U.S.-led peace process.
Aerial and ground drones have become so dominant that having troops in forward positions — the so-called zero line — no longer serves a military purpose for Ukraine’s defense, because they cannot move above ground without being killed and are virtually impossible to rotate or supply, Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Kyiv’s National Institute for Security Studies, told me.
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