Why the US Mid Term elections are so important to Ukraine's fate in the war with Russia - Patrick Mercer

I’d love to know, though, how much time and anxiety he expends on the ripples that will spread out from his domestic concerns and how many young men will die as a result.

Now, in some quarters it’s fashionable to talk about Zelensky’s country as simply a puppet of America and the West. It’s true, Ukraine could not have fought on much beyond the spring had she not received weapons, ammunition and volunteers from the West to bolster her own forces along with tremendous injections of cash to keep her tottering economy afloat.

Remember, in April there was every sign that Kiev was preparing to negotiate with Moscow as she simply didn’t have the resources to keep on fighting. Then came Boris Johnson. Whilst we’ll never know exactly what was said, it’s widely believed that he carried a message from the Whitehouse which forbade any truce, promised extra weapons and money whilst guaranteeing that the ruinous, lethal fighting would drag on and on.

It’s now suggested that Kiev is wholly dependent upon the Democratic Party’s success in three weeks’ time because any advance by the Republicans will see a severe curtailing of US support and even, perhaps, pressure being brought to bear on President Zelensky to return to the negotiating table.

Whilst we all bleed for Ukraine and the hideous casualties which her successful but poorly coordinated counter-offensives have caused her, there are many both inside and outside that country who - whatever their motives, patriotic or venal - do not wish the war to end.

That all makes Kiev look very puppet-like, but is Moscow any the less of a marionette?

You see, the weakening of Joe Biden will be good news for Russia just as it’s bad news for Ukraine, for both depend on the machinations of local politics far away from the blood and mud of Kherson and the Donbas. And that’s why the next few weeks’ battlefield tactics will depend almost wholly on voters’ impulses in a distant continent - impulses which will hold the price of a gallon of petrol much more important than the lives of young Slavs.

So, where does this leave us? First, Ukraine has a lot of troops in the field who have massed near Kherson, are fighting back against the creeping advances of the Russians in Donbass and have probably over-extended themselves around Kharkov. Certainly, the various counter-offensives that Kiev has mounted have successfully taken back some ground, but the cost in lives has been frightful.

Also - unsurprisingly - that success has spurred Russia not only to carry out its promised referenda and formally absorb four, new oblasts into the Russian Federation, but also a fresh campaign of long range missile attacks aimed at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.

These strikes have been more successful than the Western media will allow and have not only caused power cuts and dismay in comfortable Kiev, but also disastrous outages in the rail network.

Suddenly, voices are being raised in anger at President Zelensky as the lights dim and the endless lines of coffins continue to arrive but, more importantly, Ukrainian reserves are no longer able to be moved like chess pieces around the battlefield as the trains have no power.

So, we have a curious conundrum as the West pushes Kiev to seize more land and kill more Russians before winter comes whilst the Ukrainians no longer have the physical power to do it.

And there’s another aspect: the West has run out of weapons to help her ally.

So, whilst Ukraine seems to have over reached herself and left thousands of troops loitering with no power to drive them forward, so the other part of the conundrum becomes obvious. Russia has started to mobilise and may have enjoyed more success against her enemy’s power supply than she expected, but is she in any position to capitalise on all this?

Well, there’s all sorts of talk and carefully positioned media articles from Russia about a buildup of troops in Belarus, even with suggestions that that country will formally join the fighting alongside Russia: it’s nonsense.

The Russians arriving near Minsk come empty handed with no artillery nor any heavy kit, whilst a quick look at the map shows that the Polesie marshes make Belarus’s southern borders almost impenetrable with the few exit routes that were used to assault Kiev last February now firmly closed.

No, these deployments are simply training of newly mobilised Russians which have been made to look like a credible threat.

Yet, with a new, military satellite just launched and fresh Russian divisions trickling into holding positions around Belgorad and Rostov, everyone is braced for a major escalation. I’m told, though, that Moscow’s troops have been ordered to relax for a while as - beyond the continuing missile interdiction campaign - Russia intends to risk nothing which would hand a PR coup to the Whitehouse in the weeks before the Mid Terms.

So we hold our breath: Ukraine’s successful yet tired and hamstrung by lack of fuel for her trains; Russia’s licking her wounds whilst preparing for a winter offensive and Europe’s shivering, divided and uncertain whilst the whole, ghastly mess rests on the whims of faraway Florida.

Patrick Mercer is a former MP for Newark and Army colonel.