For neighboring countries monitoring the conflict closely, Zelensky’s initial successes faded over subsequent years of mismanagement and strategic error. Notably, Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive did not meet expectations despite substantial NATO support in weaponry and training. Some observers attribute this outcome to a faulty Zelensky battle plan that prioritized attacks along the entire front rather than concentrating forces for a decisive breakthrough. As progress stalled and losses increased, a desperate Zelensky maintained that the campaign had not failed, sacking his commander, Valery Zaluzhny, for admitting that it had, and replacing him with Oleksandr Syrsky. Known as the “Butcher of Bakhmut”, Syrsky executed Zelensky’s “fight to the last man” orders for the doomed city and refused to order a tactical retreat that would have saved lives.       

Zelensky’s second failure was dithering over the winter of 2023-24 as Russia prepared a new offensive.  His reluctance to support a mobilization plan to alleviate Kiev’s manpower shortage, and in building the kind of defensive lines and fortifications utilized so effectively by Moscow, proved extremely costly for Ukraine. Instead, Zelensky prioritized operations to demonstrate that Ukraine was still on the offensive—missile strikes on Crimea, assassinations in Moscow, and grabbing a bridgehead on the Russian side of the Dnipro River—even if they lacked coordination or strategic sense. That strategic bridgehead, for instance, was the village of Krynky, taken by lightly armed Ukrainian marines ferried on rafts across river channels in what was touted as a step toward liberating Crimea. In actuality, it was just a small regiment mired in swampy terrain that Ukraine abandoned after suffering heavy losses in Russian counterattacks. The Krynky operation drew heavy criticism, although Zelensky’s defenders deemed it a success given reports of higher Russian losses compared to Ukraine’s. However, Russia’s substantial advantages in personnel and equipment challenge assessments based solely on casualty comparisons, and such arguments are certainly less convincing for mourning Ukrainians.   

Zelensky’s third major blunder was Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, launched in August 2024. From a military perspective, attempting to seize and occupy a lightly defended part of Russia was strategically suspect—it was a vulnerable territory of little military value, soon to be retaken by Russia. Its primary goals were political: to embarrass Putin, unsettle Russian citizens, and possibly divert Russian forces from the Donbas. In practice, it backfired on all fronts: it strengthened Putin, by seeming to confirm NATO’s aggressive designs on Russia; it rallied the Russian people, as was to be expected; and rather than impeding progress, Russia’s Donbas campaign intensified as key Ukrainian brigades were redeployed to Kursk. Ultimately, Ukraine was pummeled into withdrawing, resulting in significant equipment losses and numerous casualties—all for a brief and illusory improvement in morale.

As such, their ideological differences notwithstanding, Central European leaders broadly agree on core Ukraine issues. The consensus is that Kiev cannot win a war of attrition. There is no prospect of arming Ukraine to do much more than slowly retreat while punishing Russia with drone strikes. And that this trajectory will leave a devastated and depopulated country—flooding its neighbors with refugees and needing hundreds of billions in subsidies for years to come. Central Europe can afford neither. They have already balked at merely opening EU grain markets to Ukrainian exports because it threatened to bankrupt their farmers. This sparked massive protests and political shocks in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania over 2023-24 as Brussels hoped to boost Ukraine’s export earnings. The episode revealed that Ukraine’s Central European neighbors stand united and firm—even though it has cost Kiev billions in lost trade—in a small foretaste of the battles that lie ahead in Ukraine’s hoped-for accession to the EU and its single market. 

There are frictions beyond economic ones, too, including those heightened by Ukrainian nationalism. Each of the neighbors has objected to how Kiev’s new language laws—meant to diminish the use of Russian—have also restricted the language rights of ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks, and others in Ukraine. Poland has a special grievance over Ukraine’s reluctance to cooperate over the legacy of massacres committed by Ukrainian nationalists in WWII, one that recently threatened to derail Ukraine’s EU accession. Still, such disputes all arise against a backdrop of deep economic anxiety. Compared to much of Europe, this region remains poorer, yet—whipsawed first by impacts of COVID, then war, and sanctions—must also cope with the burdens of Ukraine’s aid requirements and refugees as well as skyrocketing energy prices and lost export markets. Now, Brussels further obligates them to double or triple their defense spending while they also face a trade war with the U.S.

Predictably, a former factory worker in Poland or Hungary, who must now work in a supermarket and part-time as a security guard to make ends meet, also has a much more negative perception of another year of conflict in neighboring Ukraine than members of the more affluent middle class in Belgium or Denmark. The costs of war, and anger at its mismanagement by both Brussels and Kiev, are a major cause of the right-wing populist surge in recent Central European elections. And stories of Ukrainian corruption—whether it be officials skimming off Hungarian-donated aid, bribe-taking draft boards helping men escape military service to draw welfare in Poland, or Ukrainian scammers targeting Czech seniors—naturally elicit resentment and anger. That such cases are inflamed by social media or exaggerated by politicians does not alter the fact that public attitudes have soured in what were once the most pro-Ukraine neighbors, and that this change derives in large measure from economic insecurity and resentment at Ukrainian waste, corruption, and perceived ingratitude.

While Western mainstream media generally presents a favorable coverage of Ukraine, with only the most high-profile of the country’s corruption scandals ever making headlines, rising public skepticism in both Ukraine and Central Europe often goes unreported. No major Western media outlet reported the results of a 2024 survey, for example, in which 78 percent of Ukrainians said Zelensky bears responsibility for graft in government and the military. In another 2024 poll investigating why Zelensky has failed to keep his campaign promises, 50 percent pointed to “dishonest, corrupt people on his team” while only 31 percent blamed the war. Similarly, a May 2025 survey found that two-thirds of respondents viewed the prosecution of former president Poroshenko as illegitimate, believing it was meant to “divert attention” from a losing war or “neutralize” political opposition to Zelensky.