The Russian-Ukrainian war has entered its decisive stages for the control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The ongoing battles are a make-or-break moment for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia’s war aims, and Moscow’s success in controlling the Donbas region means that Ukrainian forces have been besieged there after incurring enormous strategic and human losses.

As the battles enter their decisive stages, Western calculations on the outcome of the war are becoming increasingly complex. The Ukrainian government is demanding advanced heavy weapons that match the capabilities of the NATO countries. It is also demanding that large quantities of these weapons be delivered to Kyiv before Russia achieves its military objectives and forces the Ukrainian forces to retreat.

But the dilemma for the West is that the US and European countries such as France, Germany, and Italy are reluctant to send advanced heavy weapons to Ukraine that are capable of reaching targets inside Russia, fearing that this could lead to a direct military confrontation with Moscow.

The quantities of the weapons requested by Kyiv are also so large that the demands have raised eyebrows in some European capitals amid concerns that Kyiv is pushing its demands for NATO-standard weapons to the limit. Some of these weapons are not currently available in the quantities that Ukraine wants, or sending them to Ukraine would mean that the countries giving them would themselves be left militarily vulnerable.

Germany has refused to send some heavy modern tanks to Kyiv on the grounds that it needs to keep these in order to protect itself.

Ukraine has called on the West to supply it with 300 rocket launchers, 500 tanks, and 1,000 howitzers, and a meeting of NATO defence ministers will take place on Wednesday in Brussels chaired by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss future weapons consignments to Ukraine. The gathering is the third such meeting to have taken place since the war in Ukraine began.

The maximalist weapons request was made by Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who argued that Ukraine needed “heavy weapons parity” to defeat Russia and end the war. This would require 300 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), he said, vastly more than the seven committed to thus far by the US and UK, and greater than the 60 or more that other advisers have previously said would meet its needs.

Podolyak’s list also included 1,000 howitzers of the NATO 155 mm standard, several times more than what has been dispatched so far. The US, Ukraine’s leading arms supplier, had delivered 109 by the end of May.

The military demands come at a time when Ukraine’s military is struggling to resist an intense artillery-led Russian assault on the eastern Donbas region and is losing 200 soldiers killed in action on some days in the heaviest fighting seen in Europe since the end of World War II. The Ukrainians worry that they will be given just enough weapons for them to keep on fighting but not enough to defeat Russia.

Over the past few days, Zelensky has contacted various Western leaders in a bid to persuade them to send more weapons to prevent Donbas from falling into the hands of Russia. He argued that the intense battle for Sievierodonetsk in the Donbas region would be remembered as one of the “most brutal” Europe has ever seen and one that has been taking a “terrifying” toll on Ukraine as Russian forces move closer to capturing the strategic eastern city.

Zelensky, who has expressed his fears of losing the support of the West as the conflict drags on, repeated earlier pleas for more advanced and heavier weapons from allies including the US and UK.

“We are dealing with absolute evil. And we have no choice but to move forward and free our territory. We draw the attention of our partners daily to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery pieces for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of the Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas,” Zelensky said, reiterating Ukraine’s desire to free its territory and “drive the occupiers out of all our regions.”

“Although the width of our front is already more than 2,500 km, the strategic initiative is still ours,” he added.

While Kyiv considers that victory in the war will mean the defeat of Russia and its expulsion from all the land it has occupied since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February, there is no Western consensus.

Poland, Finland, Estonia, and the Baltic states have said that Russia must be defeated and Ukraine must win the war to put an end to Russia’s expansionist ambitions for generations to come. But US President Joe Biden has stated that Washington will continue to support Ukraine to put it “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table” without specifying the terms for a peace settlement and arguing that only Ukraine has the right to determine the shape of a settlement with Moscow.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said repeatedly that Russia must not win the war, but he has not said that Ukraine must achieve victory. French President Emmanuel Macron has stated that Paris wants Ukraine to emerge “victorious” but without humiliating Russia during the subsequent political settlement.

With Europe’s long-term political stability in mind, Macron said that a “humiliation” and “revenge” mentality had “wreaked havoc on the roads to peace,” a reference to Europe’s war-torn history and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 when harsh peace terms were imposed on Germany that many have thought helped to encourage the rise of fascism in the country and later led to World War II.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has simply stated that “Ukraine must win” and take back all the land occupied by Russia, arguing that Moscow must pay a price for its military invasion of a sovereign country. These differences are not insignificant or trivial, as they could have major repercussions regarding military, financial, and intelligence support for Ukraine and future relations with Russia after the war.

While Kyiv is demanding more heavy and advanced weapons in a push for outright victory, Paris, Berlin, and Washington are reluctant to comply with Ukraine’s demands, since the closer Kyiv is to achieving military victory over Russia, the greater the risk of all-out war.

Moscow has stated that it will not use nuclear weapons in the conflict unless there is an existential threat to the nation and Russia’s defeat in the war with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin would see this as an existential threat to Russia and one justifying the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

There is international pressure not to test Russia’s intentions regarding the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort. There is also a growing rejection of the narrative of good versus evil in the conflict. In a rare intervention, Roman Catholic Pope Francis said on Tuesday that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps somehow provoked” as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he had been warned that NATO was “barking at the gates of Russia.”

In an interview with the magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the pontiff condemned the “ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops” in Ukraine while warning against what he said was a fairy-tale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.

“We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was bad,” he said. “Something global is emerging, and the elements are very much entwined.”

He added that a couple of months before the war he had met a head of state, whom he did not identify but described as “a wise man who speaks little.” This man “told me that he was very worried about how NATO was moving. I asked him why, and he replied ‘they are barking at the gates of Russia. They don’t understand that the Russians are imperial and can’t have any foreign power getting close to them,’” he said.

“We do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was, perhaps, somehow either provoked or not prevented.”

Shortly before the invasion, Putin had demanded that NATO rule out allowing Ukraine, which borders Russia, into the military alliance.

The Pope said that he was not “pro-Putin” and that it would be “simplistic and wrong to say such a thing.” He also said that Russia had “miscalculated” the war. “It is also true that the Russians thought it would all be over in a week. They encountered brave people, people who are struggling to survive and who have a history of struggle,” he said.

On Tuesday, after asking the West for more long-range weapons, Zelensky accused Scholz of being too concerned about the repercussions his support for Ukraine could have on Berlin’s ties with Moscow. “We need from Chancellor Scholz the certainty that Germany supports Ukraine,” he said in an interview with German broadcaster ZDF.

 “He and his government must decide; there can’t be a trade-off between Ukraine and relations with Russia,” he added.

It was never going to be easy to realise all the West’s goals in Ukraine, including backing Ukraine to achieve victory, ruling out direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia, preserving a line of communication with the Kremlin, seeking diplomatic channels for a long-lasting peace settlement, and finding ways to coexist with Moscow when the conflict is over.

But now more than ever, these aims look even more difficult to achieve as urgent domestic issues are dominating the agenda in the Western countries, among them the cost-of-living crisis, inflation, and the economic slowdown. With fading public interest and the world’s media focusing on other issues, how long can the West keep up its unity on Ukraine?

A version of this article appears in print in the 16 June, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.