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Re: Ukraines’ WAR Fatigue: Two Years of Agony as US GOPS Continue to STALL Further He
Ukraine Frontline: Exhaustion of War in Battle-Weary Towns
Shock, Anger and WAR Fatigue: Ukraines’ Two Years of Agony as US Continues its Petty Political Arguments on Further Help.. 
BUT Canada Steps In By Giving Ukraine Over 800 Drones Worth $95 Million...
Stalled US Aid For Ukraine Underscores GOPs' Shift Away From Confronting Russia
Republicans have been softening their stance on Russia ever since Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents
BBC News 20 FEB 2024
No one town can capture the mood of this huge, struggling nation, after almost two years of war.
Ukraine war: A front-line town torn between determination and despair..A statue in the Park of Eternal Glory in Kyiv.
Artillery unit commander Titushko.
As the anniversary of Putin’s invasion nears, the fall of Avdiivka has given Russia its first gain in months. In Kyiv, cracks in morale are showing. What happens now?
Close to the frontline in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a bumpy road passes through half-abandoned hamlets. It morphs into a muddy track, snakes through fields, and eventually leads to an army base hidden in a forest.
There, as a kettle boiled on a gas heater, a weary 39-year-old soldier, who wished to be known only by his callsign, Titushko, spoke about the problems of fighting the Russians amid a serious ammunition shortage, as the sound of fire from nearby positions echoed around the base.
In November, Titushko’s men, part of an artillery division in Ukraine’s First Tank Brigade, received a supply of about 300 shells every 10 days, but they now have a firing limit of just 10 a day. “Back then, we could keep them on their toes, fire all the time, aim every time we saw a target. Now we fire exclusively for defence,” he said.
The ammunition reserves at the base are thin, and partly made up of Iranian shells – part of a shipment seized in the Gulf apparently en route to Houthi rebels in Yemen. They are “extremely problematic and don’t work well,” another soldier at the base said.
Along the frontline, Ukraine is on the defensive, short of ammunition and soldiers. On Saturday, Ukraine’s military command announced it was withdrawing from Avdiivka, further east in Donetsk region, handing Russia its first major territorial gain since May last year. Ukrainian officials have described the loss as a direct consequence of the shortage of ammunition from the west.
Ammunition at a forest base west of Avdiivka.
The grim news, as the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches, is another sign that the third year of the war could be the hardest yet for Ukraine. The mood is very different from that of a year ago, when amid the horror Ukrainians remained buoyed up by the extraordinary consolidation of national society, and looked forward to the swift liberation of all territories occupied by Russia.
In Kyiv, the cultural historian Natalia Kryvda attributed the remarkable coming-together in the first year of the war to Ukraine’s past as a nation that lacked the infrastructure of a state. “Because we have this long history of a stateless nation, we organised these horizontal links to start the defence. People took responsibility, they didn’t wait for orders,” she said.
Natalia Kryvda in the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.
Those first months saw almost all segments of society unite, said Kryvda, creating a powerful new Ukrainian identity and a pride in being Ukrainian after years of denigration of the concept from Russia. “It was something very beautiful, but I’m worried that this unity is starting to crack now,” she said.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reminded the Munich security conference of just how much Ukrainian society had achieved over the past two years: “Ukrainians have been holding [out] for 724 days – 724 days, would you have believed 725 days ago that this was even possible?”
But with casualties mounting, army ranks and artillery supplies depleted and US financial aid stalled – and with the potentially devastating prospect of a Donald Trump presidency on the horizon – Ukrainians greet the second anniversary with trepidation about what the future might hold, as well as with increasingly visible divisions in society.
Stalled US Aid For Ukraine
At about 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don't like this reality," Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.” But he quickly added: “Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.”
That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped so there's no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party's growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.
The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Trump won the 2016 election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Putin is holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values and the GOP is growing increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements.
Then there's Trumps' personal embrace of the Russian leader.
Now the GOPs' ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war.
The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it.
In the Republican-controlled House, SNIDEY Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as Ukraines' military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.
'How Long Can Ukraine Hold Off The Russians?’ As House GOP Block Ukraine Aid
'Putin had congratulated House Republicans for stalling aid package'
Canada Giving Ukraine Over 800 Drones
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