President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to extend martial law and mobilization in rolling 90-day increments—now deep into 2026—signals a strategic bet: survive militarily long enough to outlast Russia and hope a future U.S. administration delivers decisive support. It is framed as resolve. In truth, it reflects strategic desperation. Worse, it risks producing the opposite of what it intends.

The Arithmetic of Attrition

Time is not neutral in wars of attrition. It is a weapon—and Moscow now wields it. Prolonged wars reward demographic depth and industrial scale. Ukraine has neither.

Its effective population has fallen to about 38 million after displacement and emigration. Western estimates place Ukrainian casualties—killed, wounded, or permanently disabled—in the hundreds of thousands. Even conservative figures point to a manpower crisis already underway. Kyiv is conscripting older age groups and sending wounded soldiers back to the front with minimal recovery. Men in their fifties with weeks of training now hold positions once manned by seasoned infantry.

Russia fights from a different base. With 145 million people, it can absorb losses that would shatter Ukraine. According to assessments by the Royal United Services Institute and corroborating European defence ministry estimates, Russia now produces artillery shells at roughly three times the combined U.S.–European rate — a gap widening, not closing. Europe is scaling production, but from a low base and at a slower pace, while Russia has reorganized its economy around war. The key question is not whether Europe........

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