In Defense of 'Time' Magazine's Critical Ukraine Coverage

On Monday, Time magazine's Simon Shuster published a lengthy article outlining Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's declining support abroad, his waning popularity at home, and his country's increasingly grim prospects for winning a battlefield victory over occupying Russian forces anytime soon. While the article itself was short on named sources, often relying on quotes from "one of Zelensky's close aides" or "a senior military officer," the story these anonymized figures conveyed was largely representative of the feeling on the ground here in Ukraine: determined, but increasingly exhausted.

Shuster's article attracted an immediate backlash from Zelensky supporters both at home and abroad. However, most of those characterizing Time's coverage as "Russian propaganda" have not spent the past several weeks shuttling between meetings in Kyiv with Ukrainian parliamentarians, military figures, civil society activists, and ordinary citizens. Newsweek has. If Shuster's article deserves any criticism, it is that the senior correspondent likely toned down much of the pessimism he was hearing from his interlocutors in the country.

This does not mean that Ukrainians are preparing to give up the fight. Despite calls from certain circles to end the war by trading "land for peace," no one offering up such abstract ideas has adequately explained how any sort of signed document could satisfy the aggressor in this conflict—a Kremlin regime that appears as determined as ever to annihilate Ukrainian statehood, regardless of the cost to its own subjects' security and well-being.

Ukrainians are not ignorant of the fact that their choice is not between war and peace but between war and Bucha. And yet, their war effort is not aided by ignoring the serious shortcomings in the provision of Western aid, nor by ignoring the Zelensky administration's failures to investigate ongoing instances of corruption, nor by ignoring the growing dissatisfaction of soldiers preparing to spend a second winter in a trench while their friends back home dodge recruiting officers.

If Ukraine is to prevail in its struggle for national survival, it will require significantly more foreign aid—both financial and material. However, with martial law likely to postpone democratic elections in Ukraine for as long as the fighting continues, outside political pressure remains the best available means for guaranteeing that the Zelensky government puts those aid dollars to the best possible use. Shuster's message may not have come as welcome news to cheerleaders of Ukraine, located thousands of miles away from the nearest Russian minefield, but under the circumstances, more articles like his are going to be necessary in order to ensure that the Ukrainians doing the fighting—both on the battlefield and in civil society—receive the full measure of support from their servants of the people back in Kyiv.

An unfounded claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin suffered a cardiac arrest and died last week was accompanied by the rumor that Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Security Council, had become the country's new leader.

The rumor of Putin's "death", which the Kremlin has called a "hoax," emerged after a Telegram post by Russian gossip channel General SVR on October 26 stated that Putin died at his residence in Valdai at "20:42 p.m. Moscow time," sparking "a coup d'état in Russia."

Russia's Lancet kamikaze drones are "one of the most effective" new weapons debuted by Moscow in Ukraine in recent months, the U.K. government said, as the Kremlin gains on Kyiv's lead in the drone war.

Russia's Lancet uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) have "highly likely been one of the most effective new capabilities that Russia has fielded in Ukraine over the last 12 months," the British defense ministry said in its latest update on Wednesday.

Most Russians now support ending President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, according to a poll published by Russia's Levada Center, an independent research organization based in Moscow.

The survey, conducted from October 19 to October 25, found that 70 percent of Russians would support Putin should he decide to end the conflict this week.

However, if ending the war would include Russia returning the territories that it has occupied and annexed throughout the conflict, only a third (34 percent) of respondents said they would support that decision.

America's support for the war in Ukraine is declining, and a majority of adults say that U.S. financial aid to Kyiv should come with a time limit, according to a new poll by Gallup.

According to Gallup, 61 percent of U.S. adults said there "should be a time limit" on American aid to Ukraine, compared to 37 percent who said the U.S. should continue its support "as long as Ukraine requests it." The response largely broke down along party lines, with 84 percent of Republicans supporting a time limit to Ukraine aid. But 34 percent of Democrats said they also support placing a time limit on U.S. aid.

By Brendan Cole

Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has said the war against Russia has reached deadlock and a technological breakthrough would be needed for his troops to wrest back the initiative.

Five months into Kyiv's counteroffensive, Zaluzhnyi told The Economist there was parity between the two sides, adding: "We have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate."

A year ago, Ukrainian forces dealt Moscow blows, with breakthroughs in the Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts. However, these were followed by delays from the West in supplying long-range missile systems and tanks to capitalize on Kyiv's gains.

This week, President Volodymr Zelensky described an uphill battle in trying to secure weapons from the West, amid global war fatigue and as attention is focused on the conflict in the Middle East.

Zaluzhnyi told the current affairs magazine the West was "not obliged to give us anything and we are grateful for what we have got" but that in planning the counteroffensive, Ukraine had calculated an army of its size could move at around 18 miles a day.

Four months "should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea," returned and "gone back in and out again," he said.

Progress has been slow, however. Ukrainian troops and equipment have been stuck in minefields on the approach to Bakhmut in the Donetsk oblast. In the south, the push faltered despite western equipment. Zaluzhnyi said he had changed commanders and moved soldiers in some brigades.

High Russian losses in the Donetsk town of Avdiivka, where Moscow launched an offensive in October, reinforced for the general how the two sides have equal capabilities to detect and destroy any concentration of forces.

"The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing," he said. "For us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other."

Without such a technological leap forward, "there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough."

In an essay for The Economist, Zaluzhnyi goes into more detail on this topic, but avoids the word "stalemate." Instead, he describes the situation as a "positional" war that can only change if Ukraine secures five main operational components. These are:

• Gaining the air superiority Kyiv lacked in the counteroffensive
• Gaining the ability to breach Russian mine barriers
• Increasing counterbattery effectiveness
• Creating and training the troops required with a unified state register
• Building up electronic warfare capabilities.

The general outlined how improved drone capabilities could help with the push to gain air superiority, improve counterbattery operations and degrade Russian visibility over the front. Kyiv also needs the unmanned aerial vehicles to overload Moscow's air defenses and neutralize its strike drones, he said.

Zaluzhnyi also warned of the dangers of an attritional trench war that could "drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state," which would benefit President Vladimir Putin.

"We need to look for this solution," he told The Economist, "quickly master it and use it for a speedy victory. Because sooner or later, we are going to find that we simply don't have enough people to fight."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's defense ministry for comment.