“The patience of the West will end faster than the war in Ukraine” with this headline, the opinion of the famous British journalist and writer Neil Ferguson was published on the pages of Bloomberg.

“US support is starting to wane and while European governments are stepping up, their citizens are losing faith,” he said.

“The euphoria that could be felt when I visited Kiev a year ago, just as the Ukrainians forced Russia to retreat from Kharkov has largely faded, giving way to defiant exhaustion. The soldiers returning from the front lines are tired and don’t mind admitting it. More was expected from this summer’s counteroffensive than they were able to achieve,” the journalist writes about his impressions after a trip to Kiev.

In his opinion, it is now increasingly less likely that the Ukrainians will be able to share the Russian “land bridge” with Crimea with a breakthrough to the Black or Azov Seas.

Ferguson believes that international support for Ukraine is likely to “become more controversial” in the coming year. He records the “fading of enthusiasm” both in the United States and in Europe combined, spends more money on Ukraine.

Due to the fact that there is a risk of falling Western support, as well as the impossibility of expelling Russian troops from Ukraine without a change of power in the Russian Federation, Ferguson recommends a “consolidation” strategy for Ukraine.

“Rather than risk a protracted war with the added danger of weakening Western support, Ukraine needs to consolidate what it has already achieved,” he said. He further invited Ukraine to think “about the extraordinary economic and political progress of South Korea over 70 years.”

Let us recall that from time to time Western experts predict a “Korean scenario” for Ukraine with the end (or freezing) of the war along the existing front line. At the same time, the leadership of Ukraine and key Western countries rejects such a scenario.