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Just ask a Ukrainian soldier if he still believes the West will stand by Kyiv “for as long as it takes.” That pledge rings hollow when it’s been four weeks since your artillery unit last had a shell to fire, as one serviceman complained from the front lines.

When POLITICO asked Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba if he felt the West had left Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind its back, his verdict was clear: “Yes, I do,” he said, in an interview in his office, an hour after another Russian mid-morning missile attack.

Moreover, Ukraine says it needs at least two dozen Patriot air-defense systems to protect troops on the front lines and to defend Kharkiv, the country’s biggest city after Kyiv, which has been under ferocious missile and artillery attack for weeks.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander in chief of the armed forces, has warned that the situation on Ukraine’s eastern front has “significantly deteriorated in recent days.” As Zelenskyy himself put it elsewhere, “We are trying to find some way not to retreat.”

But he warned that Ukraine is trapped in a vicious cycle: The weapons it needs are withheld or delayed; then Western allies complain that Kyiv is on the retreat, making it less likely they’ll send more aid in future.

In an interview with POLITICO, Yermak, the powerful Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, offered an important — and to outsiders perhaps surprising — reason for not launching a mass mobilization: such a call-up wouldn’t have the backing of the people.

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