Link to besieged city is cut as Ukraine allies question strategy

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, insists that his country may yet prevail if it is given more powerful weaponry, but as Western military leaders prepared to meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, some officials sounded dubious, with talk again turning to what an end to the war might look like — and how to bring it about…

Mr. Zelensky’s government has asked the West for a vast increase in sophisticated weapons and tools, like rocket launchers, howitzers, drones and tanks. The increasingly desperate pleas appeared likely to put added pressure on 40 Western allies when they meet in Brussels along with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, and the American secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III.

Some Western officials say Mr. Zelensky may not have a viable strategy to win the war. The Ukrainians have had some success fighting at relatively close ranges, and the Russians have countered by relying on their immense advantage in longer-range artillery and missiles, pounding cities and towns to rubble before sending in troops.

But a war of attrition — Ukraine has been losing as many as 200 soldiers a day in the fighting — favors Russia for the simple reason that it has more soldiers to lose. And, Mr. Zelensky has said, Mr. Putin has shown he is willing to treat his own troops as “cannon fodder.”