It was not.

Fireworks that greeted the New Year in Ukraine, but a barrage of deadly missiles and drones. The war may not be in the headlines as much as it once was, but it continues. So as we enter 2024, where do things stand? The front lines may not be moving, but that doesn't mean we have reached a stalemate.

The level of attrition and the level or speed at which both sides can regenerate combat power, offensive combat power, will set the conditions for later in 2024. So both sides are in a race trying to inflict the most damage or attrition possible, while regenerating their own forces and whoever wins that process is going to have a substantial advantage later in the conflict. And so this isn't just because there isn't movement doesn't mean things aren't changing.

2023, Sovietry saw Ukraine launch a long-awaited counter-offensive. There had been talk of cutting off Crimea. In the end, the front lines barely moved. Now it's the Russians who are on the offensive.

What we see here now that they are preparing to attack on again, on at least three directions again. That's Kharkiv, that's the north of Ukraine, again, that would be Chernihiv, Sumo, that's on the way to Kyiv, and the south of Ukraine, I mean, the Klyiv and the Doste.

Russia has stepped up its aerial bombardment of Ukraine in recent days, launching hundreds of drone and missile attacks across the country.

That's a campaign which is aimed at degrading the Ukrainian will and capacity to resist. The second line of effort is to run down the magazines of air defense, interceptors, because if the Russians can exhaust the available air defenses, then the Russian Air Force will gain access to medium altitude over the front line, and that will translate into a tactical advantage on the battlefield.

For Ukraine, the big hope has always been the arrival of Western jets, and it seems US-made F-16s will soon be in the skies. They are a totemic issue. But how much of an impact will they really have?

The would provide valuable air cover to troops on the ground. They would also give the Ukrainians much more range in terms of going farther afield and striking at Russian military targets. They have great defensive capability as well. There's a lot that they can do with the F-16s once they have them. But they will.

Not be a silver bullet. Victory in this war is about more than what happens on the battlefield. Russia is still a world of its own world. This is really a battle of societies, of their political will, and their industrial capacity.

Ukraine is making considerable efforts to expand production domestically, and that is bearing fruit. But Ukraine does not control the financing or have access to the supply chains to be able to massively ramp up production. Russia, on the other hand, is not under the same missile threat. It's less constrained. It has substantially more resources, and it does have control of a lot of the supply chains involved. And so the Russians have moved on to a war footing in their defense industry and are rapidly accelerating production.

Well, Mr. President, welcome back. Left on its own, Ukraine would not win this war. It's relied on the significant support of its allies. But distracted by crises elsewhere in the world, there is a fear the West's resolve may be wavering.

But the loss of Ukraine, that would be the historical, the huge historical EU and our partners mistake if they stop to support.

The Russians have decided that they are able to outlast the West's political will, and therefore they think they can win. And the fact that they think they can win means that they are prepared to persist because they think that their prospects will improve over time. Now, whether they're correct in those assessments is up to us.