link to ISW report https://understandingwar.org/research/cognitive-warfare/eyes-on-the-target-seizing-the-strategic-initiative-against-russia/

The United States and Europe risk squandering the best opportunity since 2022 to alter Russia’s trajectory toward a longer and larger war. Ukraine currently has the best chance of seizing the strategic initiative against Russia since December 2022, while simultaneously facing the greatest risk to its momentum. Russia’s ballistic missile and jet-powered drone campaign against Ukraine, alongside its growing kinetic attacks against NATO states, aims to drive Ukraine and its allies into a reactive stance and distract them from seizing a hard-won opportunity to hold the strategic initiative against Russia. The Kremlin’s offer to supply diesel to global markets is a cognitive warfare effort that similarly aims to disrupt the momentum of the effective pressure campaign against Russia’s energy sector. The Kremlin, unlike the United States and Ukraine’s other partners, recognizes that Russia is critically vulnerable to initiative, momentum, and sustained pressure.[1] The Kremlin is vigilant about Ukraine and its partners holding the initiative and seeks to deter and disrupt it at all costs.[2] The United States and Europe can either deny the Kremlin’s strategy or risk a greater war with greater escalation risks.

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Ukraine’s partners must proactively resource Ukraine’s battlefield momentum. Momentum requires resourcing and planning. The European Union’s release of its loan to Ukraine should avoid repeating the incrementalism patterns in delivery of Western military aid that allowed Russia to prolong the war in the first place.[22] European funding needs to support Ukraine’s military leadership’s ability to plan simultaneous and successive operations well into the next year in order to sustain and grow the effects of Ukraine’s 2026 progress in its ground war.