What the commentators said Much has been made of Russia’s advances in recent weeks, said Max Boot in The Washington Post, but “the facts on the ground” suggest that Ukraine’s position is still pretty strong. True, Russian forces have made “incremental ga

Alas, that sort of talk belongs in the realm of “fantasy”, said Robert Colls in The New Statesman. Leaving aside the threat of nuclear escalation, do hawks in the West really think Russian forces will simply “crawl away” while Zelensky stages a “victory parade in Kyiv”? No, the “miserable truth” is that neither side can afford to lose this war. If it is to end, Putin “has got to be shown a way down” so that a diplomatic solution can be found – however unpalatable that sounds. For now, the war in Donbas is like a “bloody seesaw”, said Daniel DePetris in The Spectator. “The Russians spend a day acquiring one kilometre of ground, only for the Ukrainians to counterattack shortly thereafter.” Neither side looks likely to end the stalemate soon, and both appear to view diplomacy as “a chore best left to some later date”. The most likely scenario is therefore that the war descends into a “frozen conflict”, like the one in Donbas from 2014 until February. That’s by no means a good outcome – but right now, it’s “looking like the best of bad options”.

What next?

The foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey met in Ankara this week to discuss opening a corridor in the Black Sea for agricultural exports, following warnings that Russia’s naval blockade could trigger global food shortages. Kyiv says that 75 million tonnes of grain could be stuck in Ukraine by autumn unless exports resume.

More than 1,000 Ukrainian fighters who surrendered after the fall of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, according to Russian state media. There have been calls in Russia to treat them as war criminals.