Mike Eckel
The mayor of Ukraine’s capital city is feuding with the president. The defense minister is under investigation as part of a bitter fight over control of weapons purchases. Recruiters are struggling to get enough men to the front. Ukrainians are fighting calls to lower the draft age.
And last week, two more towns fell to Russian forces, though the losses were more symbolic than tactical.
Ukraine is struggling to fight an existential war of defense, trying to hold back the nearly 3-year-old all-out invasion by Russia. Exhausted and battered, the population has mainly continued to rally behind the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But fractures are appearing in the country’s leadership and political class. How wide and deep they may become is an open question.
Regardless, they come at an inopportune moment for Kyiv, as momentum builds for a cease-fire with Moscow, with Ukraine’s main weapons provider, the United States, eager to end the war and diplomacy heating up ahead of the Munich Security Conference this weekend.
“These facts tell you that the political process remains active in Ukraine even during the war,” said Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “There is much hope that there could indeed be a cease-fire and that political competition will restart. It is almost like returning to normal life, to have elections and to have competition.”
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