While we rarely hear it being mentioned in the legacy media or the White House press briefing room, the situation on the front lines of the war in Ukraine is not currently looking good for Zelenski's forces. Even with a fresh round of funding and military supplies arriving from the United States, the Russian army has been punishingly effective recently, particularly in the eastern parts of the country. Putin's forces have stepped up their use of drones and aerial glide bombs such as the FAB-500 bombs launched from Su-34 bomber aircraft and employed them to devastating effect against Ukraine's soldiers and military vehicles. In a rare interview with one Ukrainian front-line commander, the Associated Press reveals that it's often not even safe for them to pull back and try to regroup in the face of the Russian advance. They have no ability to counter these types of attacks and the Russians can reach well beyond the poorly defined front lines. 

During pitched battles with far better-armed Russian forces, Ukrainian soldier Batyar’s unit has few options.

Devastating Russian aerial glide bombs that can drop up to 1.5 tons of explosives out of range of most of Ukraine’s air defenses are gnawing away at his men’s positions in a new tactic. Yet, to retreat carries no promise of safety — the rear defensive lines meant to give them cover barely exist, he said.

Lack of ammunition is forcing the outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers to pull back, one village after another, including three surrendered Sunday, as intense fighting roils the countryside surrounding Avdiivka nearly three months after the strategic city fell to Russia.

This is a particularly grim assessment. There is no longer any pretense of the Ukrainian forces launching any sort of counteroffensive during the spring and summer, hoping to drive the Russians out of the country. As better weather arrives, the Russians have been slowly but steadily moving forward. The Ukrainians were forced to pull out of three more villages near Avdiivka, located to the north of Donetsk this week. 

The government in Kyiv is blaming this on a lack of ammunition and a delay in fresh supplies arriving from the United States. But their own troops admit that there's more to the story than that. Ukraine doesn't have enough troops in some areas to stop the Russians even if they had unlimited ammunition. And many of them are raw recruits with little to no combat experience. As noted above, they have little ability to block the Russians' relentless aerial attacks. There were strategic errors as well. Ukraine failed to establish secure secondary lines where they could safely fall back in the event of Russian advances.

Russia's military was revealed as being far less capable than many analysts had previously believed at the start of this war. But now that they've built up a head of steam, it's obvious that they are still vastly better trained and equipped than Ukraine's forces. At the cautious rate they are advancing, it could take years for Russia to slowly grind its way across the whole of Ukraine, but it's conceivable that they could do it eventually. 

Shutterstock has a photo gallery of thousands of recent images of the damage that's been inflicted in Ukraine. (Content warning.) Those pictures are not just from the front lines or the eastern part of the country. The Russians are hitting targets across all of Ukraine and have taken down much of the nation's infrastructure and electrical grid. As we recently discussed, Ukraine can't even protect the tanks we gave them and has pulled them back from the front lines. At some point, we are going to be forced to admit that Ukraine is losing this war. A negotiated peace deal with Russia may still be possible but it would require some skillful diplomacy to make it happen. But if Putin is allowed to march too much further into the interior of Ukraine, he may see no value in settling for one slice of the pie when he could take the whole thing.