Ukraine: Fighting back, without the U.S.

“Strange as it sounds, it’s uplifting to visit Ukraine these days,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. That’s because “the good guys are winning—or at least holding their own.” Ukrainian troops pushed back a ferocious Russian offensive last fall, and their cities survived a frigid winter despite a Russian blitz on energy infrastructure. Now it’s spring, the power is still on, a $106 billion loan from the EU has been approved, and Ukraine is outpacing Russia despite being outgunned. The country’s military said it killed or wounded some 35,000 Russian troops in March, the highest monthly toll of a four-year war in which Russia has suffered more than 1.2 million casualties. That battlefield success has been powered by Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry. Its drones account for about 90% of all Russian casualties and are hitting targets deep behind enemy lines, including oil export facilities near St. Petersburg.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin “is facing a spring of discontent,” said Nathan Hodge in CNN.com. Ordinary Russians are frustrated with the sanctions-battered economy, “rolling digital blackouts” intended to curb dissent, and the war’s rising death toll.

Kyiv has achieved all this without President Trump, said Phillips Payson O’Brien in The Atlantic. For more than a year, Ukrainian officials held out hopes they could win him over, even after Trump publicly berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, repeatedly lavished praise on Putin, restricted military aid—first out of spite, then out of a need for weapons to strike Iran—and tilted peace negotiations in favor of the Russian invaders. “But now Kyiv appears to have given up on the U.S.” It is striking new diplomatic and military partnerships, sharing its hard-won expertise in drone warfare with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf nations targeted by Iran, and with European nations threatened by Russia. “Writing the U.S. off as a friend might once have been a sign of doom for Ukraine. It isn’t anymore.”

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Other American allies are following Kyiv’s example, said David French in The New York Times. In Europe and Canada, governments are racing to achieve greater military and financial independence from the U.S. They have woken up to the dangers of relying on a superpower protector whose leader has slammed them with sanctions, toyed with leaving NATO, and threatened to annex their territory. America may still be the world’s most powerful nation. But “the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy” no longer beats in Washington. “It’s in Kyiv.”