The War Will Grind On: Reflecting on a Year of War in Ukraine

"Throughout the war, expectations among policymakers have veered wildly between catastrophism and euphoria. This has posed a particular problem for analysts tasked with giving them a more realistic view. If in June it was exceedingly difficult to convince policymakers that a Russian victory was not inevitable, by September it was equally difficult to convince them that Ukrainian victory was not equally assured. The same tendency has bedeviled the public narrative on the war. The Kherson offensive, for example, was declared to have failed within days, even though the whole logic of the operation was to inflict unacceptable attrition on the Russians by pinning them against the Dnieper River, rather than to drive them from the city by assault."