The West's Patience Is Running Shorter Than Ukraine's War
US support is starting to waver, and while European governments are stepping up, their citizens are losing faith.
Keeping faith.
Photographer: Sergei Chuzavkov/AFP/Getty Images
Nobody would deny that Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a good speech. The Ukrainian president delivered another at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. “The goal of the present war against Ukraine,” he declared, “is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources, into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order.” And: “Evil cannot be trusted.”
By explicitly likening Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler and citing the kidnapping and Russification of Ukrainian children as evidence of genocide, Zelensky did not hold back. In this he was, as usual, channeling the sentiments of his fellow Ukrainians. According to recent polls, only 5% to 10% of Ukrainians would accept a peace that involved territorial cessions to Russia. Around 43% define victory as full territorial integrity, returning to the borders of 1991. But many others regard even this as insufficient. They want Russia not only to return stolen land but also to pay reparations and hand over its leaders to be tried for war crimes.