Victor Davis Hanson Assesses Ukraine War Stalemate and Frames the Coming U.S. Midterms

Victor Davis Hanson said in an Oct. 22 podcast segment that the war in Ukraine, about 4.7 years old, has caused roughly 2.5 million combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties, counting dead, wounded, missing and captured, and that neither side appears able to win. He said the war reaches five years on Feb. 24 of next year, making it longer than World War I, the American Civil War and the U.S. Pacific War. Hanson said Russia lacks the economy and military to absorb all of Ukraine, while Ukraine, with one-fifth of Russia's population, one-tenth of its GDP and one-twentieth of its area, cannot force Vladimir Putin out of Crimea or the occupied Donbas. He listed three ways out: one side wins, a new power joins, or a ceasefire. He also said Ukrainians are angry that President Donald Trump said they need a new president, which he did not think was the right articulation, and cited Winston Churchill's loss after the German surrender and Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 election as wartime-election precedents. In a separate column, Hanson wrote that the midterms, less than three weeks away, can be seen as a referendum on current issues and politicians or as a deeper clash between socialism and capitalism and between intrusive and limited government.

Left-leaning outlets tracked by Crosswire had not reported this story at the time of writing, while right-leaning and alternative/independent outlets had. The right-leaning Daily Signal ran Hanson's column, "The Deep Midterms," which focuses on U.S. domestic politics and uses Thomas Sowell's idea of a conflict of visions. The excerpt available does not mention Ukraine. ZeroHedge, an alternative outlet, took a distinct angle: it published a lightly edited transcript of his podcast under the headline "Ukraine Is Becoming Another Verdun," centered on casualties, the military stalemate and Zelenskyy's political position. The two pieces do not contradict each other; they cover different subjects by the same author, and neither includes outside voices in the text provided.