Ukraine: playing second fiddle

By Richard North - March 18, 2026

If it wasn’t so deadly serious, it could almost be comedic – the sight of little Volodymyr Zelensky, his country caught by the media’s “one war at a time” syndrome – visiting London to beseech his supporters “don’t forget about me”.

Poor old Volodymyr has had a hard time of it of late. Just when the Gaza conflict was fading into well-deserved obscurity and there was a chance that his “forever war” with the Russians might regain its dominant position on the media agenda, up popped the conflagration in Iran which has dominated the headlines and relegated his war to the sidelines.

The writing was on the wall with the US military strike in Venezuela, when the world’s attention turned to Trump’s little adventure there, which doubtless cost Volodymyr a few headlines, but when the US president and Israel’s Netanyahu unleashed their airborne demolition squads on Iran, Ukraine never had a hope of restoring its former prominence.

You can’t blame Zelensky for trying though. His visit to London yesterday for talks with Starmer was a golden opportunity to deliver his “don’t forget about me” message, but he also took the opportunity to address around 60 parliamentarians in a Westminster committee room to warn them about the danger of drone warfare and to rack up propaganda points, equating the Iranian and Russian regimes as “brothers in hatred”.

Understandably, Zelensky sought to link the headline-generating war in the Middle East with his long-running conflict in Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainians were now pioneers in modern warfare and schooled in techniques they could share with allies.

The key feature of that war was his country’s use of cheap, mass-produced drones, initially for offensive purposes and latterly as interceptors – on the basis that it takes a drone to down a drone – economically.

With Iran using its own drones – which had been used by Russia to such great effect in Ukraine – Zelensky said there were now 201 Ukrainian military experts in the Middle East, with another 44 ready to deploy, sharing their knowledge on how to defeat the Ayatollahs’ technology.

On this, perhaps, the nations currently under attack from Iran should have listened earlier. This might apply even to the United States: although it is deploying the FLM-136 Lucas “kamikaze” attack drone, which is strikingly similar to Iran’s Shahed drones, it is behind the curve on defence stratagems.

The essential issue here is the disparity of costs where, as Reuters reports, defence forces are finding themselves in the unsustainable position of using missiles costing $3-4 million each to down drones which might cost as little as $20,000.

The imbalance is already visible at sea, says the agency. Since late 2023, the US Navy has expended around $1 billion or more in munitions defending ships in the Red Sea from low cost Houthi drones and missiles.

Furthermore, the missile price is only part of the cost. Each interception also depends on the presence of warships and their escorts, fuel and maintenance, trained crews, intelligence and surveillance assets, and command and control networks needed to detect and defeat incoming threats.

Where high performance aircraft are being used, the hourly operating costs can exceed that of a drone by a factor of two or three times, while an anti-aircraft missile unit cost is typically just short of $500k. We are back to the Vietnam syndrome, where ordnance costing hundreds of thousands of dollars was being used to destroy bamboo huts worth $5.

Although the lesson seems to elude the MoD, the Russians are already on the case with the latest report from TASS illustrating an MT-LB APC fitted with what look like twin 23 mm 2A7 autocannons of 1960s vintage, long obsolete in their anti-aircraft role but returned to service to shoot down drones (pictured).

If the Ukrainian president can get the economic warfare message across, he will have done us all a favour, and he was doubtless conveying something of its flavour in Paris when he met Emmanuel Macron last week, and also went to Romania.

On Wednesday, Zelensky is due to fly to Madrid for talks with Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, the extent of the tour exposing an element of panic in the Ukrainian camp.

Recently, Zelensky’s aides have said he would only leave his country for reasons of the utmost importance but, with the Iran war dragging into its third week, Ukraine’s battle for survival against Russia has started to lose the world’s interest.

This has real world effects for Ukraine. Stocks of American air-defence missiles are being exhausted as they are used to defend against Iranian retaliation across the Middle East, leaving the Ukrainian begging bowls empty, as they are reliant on high-tech weapons to deal with Russian missile attacks.

Zelensky also has other economic reasons for wanting to see the Iran War shup down. As long as it driving up the oil price, Russia is earning an extra £112 million a day – profits the Russians can pump straight into their war machine, aided and abetted by Trump, who is easing some of the sanctions on Russian oil exports.

As for the conduct of the war in Ukraine, there is little Zelensky can offer which will excite the Western media – which is generally reluctant to follow the ground war in detail – and even less to inspire Western leaders in the continuing pursuit of more money and weapons to prosecute the war.

Looking in at the detail, very little seems to have changed since we last looked at the conflict just before Christmas.

This is still a war of grinding attrition, active along multiple fronts stretching over 800km. The most intense and active frontline conflicts continue to be concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine, particularly in Donetsk Oblast and adjacent areas.

And, as they have been doing since the retreat from Kiev, Russian forces have stuck to their “nibbling” strategy, making gradual advances in multiple sectors, after intensive, protracted and destructive bombardments, followed up by successive small-scale infantry assaults and, in recent battles, by resort to infiltration tactics.

Over the winter, Ukrainian forces have conducted notable counterattacks around areas like Huliaipole (Hulyaipole), Orikhiv, and toward Dnipropetrovsk, where conditions are more favourable to manoeuvre, and have reclaimed significant territory (over 400 square km in some reports). Despite this, net territorial gains favour Russia.

Ukraine has shifted the balance of its effort to include mid/long-range strikes on Russian logistics, fuel depots (e.g., near Koptevo, Makiivka), as well as attacking electronic warfare stations near occupied Donetsk, and infrastructure to degrade offensives. The basic strategy is still defensive holds and local counter attacks, with greater use of drones and automated systems in defence, in an attempt to reduce the crippling attrition rate.

As the moment, the fighting is in the grip of the rasputitsa after the thaw began set in in early-to-mid March, with snow melting across front line areas. Reports describe the transition from frozen ground to muddy conditions, and positions are described as flooded or heavily waterlogged in many sectors.

There is widespread natural flooding in low-lying areas, fields, trenches, and anti-tank ditches along defensive lines, in addition to which the Russians – taking the cue from the Ukrainian defence of Kiev – have undertaken a programme of deliberate flooding.

A 3-ton guided bomb was used to strike a dam west of Kostiantynivka (central/northern Donetsk approaches), flooding roads and blocking a key direct route for Ukrainian logistics/resupply. Earlier strikes (e.g., on a reservoir dam near Novodmitrivskyi/Novodmytrivka east of Kostyantynivka) damaged dams and caused localised flooding.

A reported dam breach near Kostiantynivka risked humanitarian issues, including flooded settlements, infrastructure damage, and ecosystem harm, concentrated in the Kostyantynivka-Chasiv Yar corridor and approaches to key hubs like Pokrovsk.

Overall, the mud has created a temporary lull in major ground assaults, although small-scale assaults continue at a high tempo.

In general, the conditions favour the defence as advances slow dramatically, vehicles get stuck, and logistics are problematical, relying heavily on drones rather than ground convoys.

Thus, there is not going to be very much to report until the ground firms up, most likely in late April–May, although later where there has been deliberate flooding. Only then, perhaps – when the situation is more fluid – may we see the Western media taking an interest.

In the meantime, the tragi-comic Zelensky is doomed to playing second fiddle to the Iran War, hoping it ends before his supporters (and especially the United States) run out of ammunition, or lose their appetites for financing foreign wars.