Since the Russia-Ukraine war began over 20 months ago, Western media has constructed and dutifully hewn to a series of narratives: Volodymyr Zelensky is a war hero and resistance leader akin to Winston Churchill. Ukrainians are eager to volunteer for the war effort while Russians flee conscription. More money and weapons are all the Ukrainians need to retake the territory Russia has annexed. The West’s interests lie in helping them achieve that grand victory rather than in pushing for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement.
Facts at odds with these narratives — such as that Ukraine has been taking unsustainable losses in combat, that we don’t have enough artillery shells to adequately supply them, that the billions we’ve been sending to Ukraine are falling prey to corruption — have been dismissed as “Putin talking points.” The critics who point them out are attacked as Kremlin apologists.
All of which is why it was so extraordinary to read this week’s cover story in TIME magazine.
Written by Simon Shuster, who previously wrote the article naming Zelensky TIME's“Person of the Year” at the end of 2022, the piece is ostensibly another hagiography of Zelensky as the heroic figure forced to go it alone as times get tough and Western allies start to “abandon” him. But rather than shoring up Zelensky’s standing in the West, it validates many of the criticisms made by those supposed Putin apologists. Only now those criticisms are being voiced by Zelensky’s own aides and advisers inside the presidential palace.
The narrative dam our media has built around the reality in Ukraine is apparently breaking wide open, and the truth is finally spilling out:
Ukraine’s war aims are unrealistic. Kyiv has long maintained that its definition of victory, namely the retaking of all Ukrainian territory including Crimea, is achievable with Western arms and money. Now a disastrous summer counteroffensive, which has resulted in horrific Ukrainian casualties while reclaiming negligible amounts of territory, has Zelensky’s advisers reconsidering whether those aims are realistic. Yet Zelensky’s belief in ultimate victory over Russia has only “hardened into a form that worries some of his advisors,” according to Shuster, who describes Zelensky’s faith as “immovable, verging on the messianic.” One of Zelensky’s closest aides tells Shuster that, “He is delusional. We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.” This of course runs counter to all the propaganda pumped out by Ukraine and repeated by Western media sources. But increasingly it’s only Zelensky who still believes his own press clippings.
Staggering casualties have decimated the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has refused to disclose casualty counts throughout the war, dismissing the increasingly-credible reports of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties as Russian propaganda. But another close aide to Zelensky tells Shuster that casualties are so horrific that “even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, ‘we don’t have the men to use them.’” Shuster reports that, “In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition.” According to the article, the average age of a currently-serving Ukrainian soldier is 43 and getting older all the time. It appears the youth have already been sacrificed.
Conscription policies are draconian. Another fact dismissed as a “Putin talking point” is that Ukrainians have had to resort to ever-more draconian conscription policies to replenish their military’s ranks. Shuster lays out the unpleasant reality: “New recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified across the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption.” The corruption became so widespread that Zelensky fired the heads of all the regional draft offices in August, but the move backfired as lack of leadership brought new recruitment nearly to a halt.
Morale is collapsing. Even patriots don’t want to die serving as canon fodder for a doomed military strategy. Within the officer ranks, there is growing dissension bordering on mutiny. One close Zelensky aide complained to Shuster that some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance even when they come directly from the office of the president. When Shuster asked a senior military officer about those complaints, the officer said that some officers have no choice but to refuse orders that are simply impossible. He told a story about an order in early October to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a “strategic outpost” in Eastern Ukraine that’s been under Russian control for almost a decade. “The answer came in the form of a question,” writes Shuster. “With what?” With no recruits and no artillery, Zelensky’s dreams of driving the Russians from every inch of Ukrainian territory cannot be achieved. He can only fight futilely to the last Ukrainian, and there is a diminishing number of Ukrainians willing to die in service of that strategy.
Corruption is uncontrollable. It has long been a “Putin talking point” that Ukraine’s government was shot through with corruption. And yet Zelensky has been getting an earful about exactly that from its U.S. and NATO allies, who don’t want to see their billions of dollars in aid disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials. Zelensky has taken some actions, like the sacking of his Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov for corrupt procurement practices. But to really root out corruption, Zelensky will have to fire most of his government. A top presidential adviser admitted as much to Shuster once his audio recorder had been shut off: “People are stealing like there is no tomorrow.”
“Nobody believes in our victory like I do,” Zelensky told TIMEin what became the pull quote for this cover story. He may have to read Shuster’s piece to see just how right he is, as he seems surrounded by aides who no longer believe in Ukraine’s war strategy or Zelensky’s leadership of it.
Zelensky no doubt intended the quote as a Churchillian “never surrender” exhortation to courage and resolve in the face of Ukraine’s “darkest hour” rather than as an admission of delusional optimism. Yet his dogmatic insistence on total victory and refusal to consider peace negotiations belie a loss of touch with reality that ought to worry both his countrymen and allies.
To be sure, Zelensky is not alone in his refusal to face reality. The Biden administration has proposed another $61 billion for Ukraine’s war effort without explaining how this will produce a different result than the $100+ billion already appropriated. Undoubtedly Zelensky’s optimism was fueled by Biden’s repeated promises of total support for "as long as it takes." But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. is in no position to deliver on that promise indefinitely. It has too many other global commitments, including to Israel, which compete for limited resources.
Alone among his team, Zelensky seems not to understand how circumstances have changed. Shuster and TIME try their best to portray him as the last stalwart of the Ukrainian cause, but the fact that his own inner circle is the source of the torrent of revelations and complaints suggests that his immovability owes not to Churchillian resolve but rather to an impervious bunker mentality.
David Oliver Sacks is Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures and cohost of the All-In Podcast.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a joint press conference with Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen in Kyiv, Ukraine September 06, 2023 (paparazzza/shutterstock)
Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) have co-written a letter to the White House, demanding to know the administration’s strategy behind the now-18 days of airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
The letter calls into question the supposed intent of these strikes “to establish deterrence,” acknowledging that neither the Biden administration’s strikes in October 2023, nor the years-long bombing campaign by Saudi Arabia from 2014 to 2020, were successful in debilitating the military organization's military capabilities.
“Rather, these campaigns only served to embolden the Houthis and rally their recruiting base,” the senators said in the letter. “U.S. military action must have a clear strategy that advances our country’s long-term national security objectives and is compliant with the law of armed conflict.”
In addition, “Congress should be briefed about the recent strikes against the Houthis and the total cost expected to be incurred by this campaign at the American taxpayer’s expense.”
Rand and Merkley also correctly connect the Houthis’ recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea with the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire, pointing out that no such Houthi attacks took place while the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas (brokered by the Trump team ahead of the presidential inauguration) had been in place.
Paul and Merkley also questioned the Constitutionality of the strikes, given there has been no Congressional declaration of war on the Houthis. Congress wasn’t even consulted.
“We also recognize that any U.S. military response — especially sustained military engagement — must be conducted within the framework of the Constitution,” the Senators said in a release Tuesday. “Although the Constitution assigns the President the role of commander in chief of the U.S. military, it is Congress that is entrusted with the power to declare war — and Congress has not done so with respect to the Houthis.”
The letter comes amidst an escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. In a post on Truth Social yesterday, President Trump warned that if the Houthis did not cease shooting at U.S. ships in the Red Sea, the real pain would be “yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran.”
Such rhetoric calls into question whether the strikes on the Houthis are to set the stage for war with Iran itself. Recognizing this possibility in their letter, the senators call on the Trump administration to make clear to Congress and the American public if they indeed intend to strike Iran directly. They conclude the letter by warning of the United States “stumbling into another costly and unnecessary war.”
Bipartisan opposition to military escalation in the Middle East is urgently needed, moving beyond the procedural ‘Signalgate' debacle to a more substantive focus on what the strikes on the Houthis are to realistically achieve, and what they portend for greater regional peace and stability.
In intensifying strikes against the Houthis, President Trump appears to be contradicting his own expressed desire to rein in American military action in the Middle East, risking a broader, regional war, while seemingly failing to identify the Houthis’ strategic calculus tied to the war in Gaza.
While President Trump pledged a legacy of peacemaker in his inaugural speech, continuing along his current path in the Middle East threatens to permanently derail this worthy pursuit, particularly if war with Iran were to break out.
Skepticism from across the aisle to avert this outcome is a welcome development.
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Top image credit: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a press conference regarding legislation that would block offensive U.S. weapons sales to Israel, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., November 19, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Will Senate vote signal a wider shift away from Israel?
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz have been roundly criticized for the security lapse that put journalist Jeffrey Goldberg into a Signal chat where administration officials discussed bombing Houthi forces in Yemen, to the point where some, like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) have called for their resignations.
But the focus on the process ignores the content of the conversation, and the far greater crime of continuing to provide weapons that are inflaming conflicts in the Middle East and enabling Israel’s war on Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians.
As Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies noted in an article in The Nation, the real disgrace in “Signalgate” was not the inclusion of a journalist in sensitive conversations, it is the continued bombing of Yemen without congressional authorization, with all the human consequences it entails:
“[T]he biggest threat—that has already resulted in real lives lost—is being ignored. And that is the threat to the lives of Yemeni people—who, how many, how many were children, we still don’t know—being killed by US bombs across the poorest nation in the Arab world.”
It’s important to put the U.S. battle with the Houthis in context. The Houthi campaign to block shipping in the Red Sea is a reaction to Israel’s war on the people of Gaza. Continued U.S. military support for Israel is the fuel that is sustaining conflicts throughout the region, from Yemen to Lebanon, and, if Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has his way, in Iran.
Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff has said the U.S. supports resuming ground operations in Gaza, blaming Hamas from rejecting new conditions for continuing the ceasefire.
Only a minority of members of Congress have taken a stand against U.S. military support for Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza or its escalation of the fighting to other parts of the region. Last November, resolutions brought by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to block parts of a $20 billion arms package to Israel received 19 votes in favor — a long way from a majority, but the first time Congress had taken action on the issue of U.S. provision of arms to Israel.
Now Sanders is bringing new joint resolutions of disapproval to block an $8.56 billion sale of bombs and other munitions to Israel. Sanders said he is doing so in order to “end our complicity in the carnage,” adding that “it would be unconscionable to provide more of the bombs and weapons Israel has used to kill so many civilians and make life unlivable in Gaza.”
More than 50,000 people have died from Israel’s military attacks on Gaza. And a paper by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins for the Brown University Costs of War Project estimates that at least an additional 62,000 have died from indirect causes like preventable disease and malnutrition.
The United States gave Israel $17.9 billion in military aid in the first year of the war in Gaza — October 2023 to the end of September of 2024. But arms offers since that time — sales beyond the $17.9 billion in military aid, including items that have yet to be delivered — total over $30 billion. These weapons could enable Israeli aggression for years to come. The current deal is particularly concerning because it consists mostly of bombs and missiles of the kind used in Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza.
While handling of classified information is a real issue, enabling collective punishment and taking military action without congressional approval are far more important with respect to their human consequences abroad and the prospects for restoring democratic input on issues of war and peace at home. The press needs to widen its lens and take on these life and death issues on a more consistent basis.
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Top photo credit: German Prime Minister-in-waiting Friedrich Merz (Shutterstock.Penofoto)
Recent polls show the center right Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU) headed by prospective chancellor Friedrich Merz losing ground against the populist right Alternative for Germany (AfD), even before the new government has been formed.
The obvious explanation is widespread popular dissatisfaction with last month’s vote pressed through the outgoing parliament by the CDU-CSU and presumptive coalition partner the SPD (with the Greens) to allow unlimited increases in defense spending. This entailed disabling the constitutional “debt brake” introduced in 2009 to curb deficits and public debt.
The new parliament, with the AfD as the main opposition party, took its seats last week. The AfD opposes financing rearmament by a massive upsurge in public debt, and supports negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Die Linke (the Left) which substantially improved its position in the February elections, opposes rearmament and favors peaceful conflict resolution. Polls show support for Die Linke has also risen since the elections.
Mainstream consensus on financing rearmament
The aversion to incurring debt to finance public expenditure, including for defense, has been a central policy tenet of the German center-right CDU-CSU. The Zeitenwende (epochal change) declared by Chancellor Scholz in 2022 provided an exceptional $100 billion in funding for defense, allowing Germany to reach the 2% of GDP target set by NATO last year.
However, the latest move by Merz — which can be seen as an intensified Zeitenwende — permits any defense expenditure in excess of 1% of GDP to be exempted from the debt brake’s provisions. The justification given is a potential Russian military threat and the conviction that the U.S. is bent on reducing its commitments to the conventional defense of Europe.
Merz’s CDU is paying the price with its fiscally conservative voters, who oppose incurring new public debt for the defense hike, rather than cutting spending to pay for it. These voters view Merz’s turnaround on fiscal probity as a betrayal of his own election campaign program.
Presumably, the rise in AfD support comes from the defection of some of the CDU-CSU voters. Although Scholz and his cabinet resigned on March 25, they remain as caretakers until the new government under Merz is formed, perhaps as early as Easter.
Public opinion and the mainstream parties’ program
Tension between the mainstream parties’ determination to continue arming Ukraine and a growing preference among much of the public for seeking a negotiated outcome has for some time been evident. The Ebert Foundation’s Security Radar 2025 report documents rising public anxiety in Germany and elsewhere in Europe about possible escalation of the war in Ukraine, with for example, 59% of Germans worried the war might escalate to the use of nuclear weapons, anda majority of (54%) of Germans agreed that defense spending should increase, with 36% opposed.
However, 53% favored a negotiated settlement of the war even if Ukraine has to sacrifice territory. A third of Germans favored NATO membership for Ukraine, a quarter favored supporting Ukraine “until it wins” and only 11% favored deploying German troops to Ukraine.
These findings suggest that the customary German reticence about armed conflict and preference for peaceful conciliation of conflicts has not been overtaken by any martial fervor.
The German public favors increasing defense spending, so long as this is understood as taking responsibility for the conventional defense of Germany itself, rather than giving priority to aiding Ukraine’s defense in the current war. The Security Radar report discerned across Europe a mood expressed by the slogan “my country first.”
How much and how soon will spending increase?
The actual magnitude of a boost to defense spending in the coming few years remains a matter for the coalition’s programmatic document (still being negotiated). The relaxation of defense spending has so far produced an additional 3 billion euros for Ukraine in 2025, to be added to the 4 billion euros already approved for 2025. This includes German made air defense systems which will need two years to be produced. There is no indication yet of the release of a torrent of new money or weapons to Ukraine.
Neither outgoing Chancellor Scholz nor Friedrich Merz has indicated Germany would contribute troops for the “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping effort advanced by UK PM Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. The question of providing Taurus missiles to Ukraine will likely arise again soon after the new government takes office. Merz has previously advocated sending these, or at least threatening to do so to exact concessions from Russia. Throughout his tenure, Scholz firmly resisted pressure to provide these missiles.
A recent report from the Breugel economic think tank estimates what defense equipment, manpower, and industrial developments would be needed for Europe to assume most or all of Europe’s conventional defense without the United States.
The authors argue that Germany needs to raise its defense spending to 3.5% of GDP within the next three years and had to lift public debt limits to do so. They suggest that Europe would face several serious constraints in attempting to replace in a timely way the American material and technical contributions to the Ukrainians in a continuing war.
Many economists, market analysts, and the DAX stock market index responded positively to the planned increases in defense spending, predicting a recovery of Germany’s weak economy as the plan is implemented. The plan includes a 500-billion-euro fund for infrastructure modernization to be spent over 12 years.
What's ahead?
In essence, the funding of a major increase in German defense spending belongs in the logic of burden-shifting of continental conventional defense from the United States onto NATO’s European members. It rests upon the anticipated continued engagement of the Americans in NATO, in the hope that a new division of labor will convince the Americans of the value of their ongoing engagement in European security.
Moreover, the spending increase will need to be sustainable over years in order for the conventional capability of Germany to compensate for an American drawdown of forces deployed in Europe. Because the rearmament aims to achieve greater “independence” from the U.S., the German and European arms industry stands to benefit.
The European public is seemingly not fully convinced of the necessity to embrace a radically changed security stance for Germany and the European members of NATO. In order to ensure stability and win long-lasting public support, the burden-shifting of conventional defense in Europe should be paired with renewal of diplomatic contacts with Russia, and with an agenda of arms control and mutual confidence building measures.
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