By Frank LEDWIDGE

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Can Ukraine sustain the costs of a long war of attrition against a larger opponent while preserving the demographic, economic, and social foundations of a viable post-war state?

This week, the war in Ukraine will pass a sombre milestone: it will have lasted longer than the First World War.

Much Western discussion continues to focus on tactical successes, technological innovation, and dramatic long-range strikes. Ukraine’s remarkable courage, resilience, and ingenuity in resisting Russia’s invasion deserve recognition. Supported by its allies, it has imposed very substantial costs on its adversary and will continue to do so for as long as the war lasts.

Yet such discussion often overlooks the central reality of the conflict. Like the Great War, this is fundamentally a war of attrition, measured not in headlines or weapons systems but in the lives and limbs of men on both sides.

Over many weeks of living and travelling all over Ukraine during this war, what has become abundantly clear to me is the depth of fear and concern around what comes afterwards.

The decisive question is no longer whether Ukraine can impose costs on Russia—plainly, it can. The real question is whether it can do so at a rate sufficient to achieve its political objectives while sustaining losses that remain acceptable militarily, socially, and demographically.

This is where the public discussion becomes very difficult. Detailed estimates of Russian casualties are widely circulated, and each successful series of strikes or new weapons systems are presented as evidence that Ukraine has ‘turned the tide.’ Yet in an attritional war, enemy losses provide only half the picture. The essential question is comparative endurance. Which side can replace its losses, sustain mobilisation, preserve social cohesion, and continue the struggle longer?

That question does not receive the attention it deserves. It is understandable that governments prefer to emphasise successes or enemy losses rather than setbacks or the casualties on the side that ‘we’ support, particularly when public support and financial assistance must be maintained. But policy based on incomplete information risks confusing hope with strategy. Further, underplaying casualties or failing to mention them at all does no justice to the dead. In the First World War, Britain, France and Germany routinely published casualty lists, which were widely circulated. Even after disasters such as the opening day of the Somme, the public was left in little doubt about the human cost of the fighting.

In the Ukraine war, we are regularly invited to believe that Russia sustains several times the number of dead suffered by Ukraine. About a year ago, I was having dinner at a London club with a well-connected former Ukrainian government official whom I have known for some time. Our conversation turned to casualties.

“Tell me, no bulls**t: what is the real casualty ratio?”

My companion paused before replying quietly: “One to one.”

Surprised, I asked for the source.

“The General Staff.”

Whether or not that figure is precisely correct is less important than the fact that a well-connected Ukrainian source regarded parity, rather than overwhelming Russian losses, as the realistic basis for assessing the war.

Similarly, for every well-publicised Ukrainian drone or missile strike on a Russian refinery, airbase or logistics hub, Russia delivers multiple strikes against a country with a far smaller economy and infrastructure base. Assisted by the intelligence and surveillance resources of the world’s leading powers, Ukraine has demonstrated an impressive ability to reach deep into Russian territory. Nonetheless, Russia retains the capacity to inflict damage on a scale that Ukraine cannot easily match. No one can say with confidence how long Ukraine can sustain such losses against an adversary with more than three times its population, vastly greater industrial resources and state revenues underwritten by substantial oil and gas exports. Those who argue that Russia is close to collapse should remember that neither the Russian state nor the Russian people have historically been noted for a lack of resilience. Ukrainians, of course, have demonstrated the same quality in abundance and will continue to do so.

Since no one has yet articulated realistic objectives or criteria for what constitutes ‘winning,’ almost anything short of defeat can, in due course, be presented as victory. But what will be left? The level of demographic crisis in a country already in steep population decline before the war is catastrophic. Millions have left the country; millions more are in Russian-controlled territory. One young woman in Odessa, expressing a common perspective, told me that none of her friends planned to return from their new homes in the West. “And there are no men,” she said. Outside Kyiv, the absence of military-age men is immediately noticeable. Many are serving, wounded, abroad, or attempting to avoid mobilisation.

For those serving, what will be there for them when they demobilise? Over a million combat-experienced, often traumatised men will need good jobs and roles beyond the military. Will it be a ‘land fit for heroes’ or a vista of unemployment and desperation? This is the vital problem of Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (known as DDR). Plans for this must include the disabled and injured. It is a truly prodigious challenge. An area larger than England requires survey and clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance. Across that landscape lie the remains of many tens of thousands of missing soldiers whose bodies have yet to be recovered, identified, and returned home.

Reconstruction will cost many, many hundreds of billions of euros. The Ukrainian state, even if we assume—as few do—that the scourge of corruption is rooted out, will need tens of billions more annually simply to sustain basic services. The armed forces will require many, many more to sustain an adequate deterrent force. Where will this money come from? Taxes from a shattered economy? Selling drones? The idea that somehow Russia will pay is surely based more on optimism than any viable reality. Or will Europe be footing the bill?

For every day this war goes on, the casualties increase, and the costs of recovery in human and financial terms get higher. The issue is not whether Ukraine deserves support. It plainly does. Nor is it whether Russia has suffered grievous losses. It plainly has. The question is whether Ukraine can continue to sustain the costs of a long war of attrition against a larger opponent while preserving the demographic, economic, and social foundations of a viable post-war state.