This Washington Post article (gift link below) discusses in unusually stark terms the situation in Ukraine. They have, of course, lowered the age of conscription - an unpopular move, even with an age of 25. And there is probably not much more Zelenskyy can do to speed up a necessary $60B aid package from the US. Zelenskyy has done an admirable job of winning support and funding, but can only do so much.
So what should Ukraine do next?
I didn’t read the entire article, but aren’t there other NATO countries that can help out right now? They are at greater risk from Russia than the US is.
If it truly becomes a war of attrition, Russia will ultimately win, and everyone knows that. Ukraine can only hold out for so long, and is already running low of needed ammunition to keep Russia at bay. By the time Congress allocates the money, it will likely be too late.
They should keep on doing the same thing they’ve been doing for the past two years: Winning. It’d be better if they were winning quickly, like they could be if we stepped up our support, but for all that Ukraine is hurting, Russia is hurting worse. They’re not showing it, because dictatorships don’t show weakness, but eventually, Russia is just going to suddenly collapse.
While the U.S. should be providing some assistance, the vast bulk should come from Europe.
Basically the battle fronts haven’t changed that much even with recent Russian wins:
Currently it cannot be said that either Ukraine or Russia is “winning” this war, and while Russia is ultimately doomed (by their own internal demographic collapse if nothing else) it is able to maintain a flow of weapons, materiel, and barely-trained conscripts to the front lines while the Ukrainian military has had to meter its attacks and blunt its own counterstrike strategy so as to not run out of ammunition. What Ukraine really needs at this point is a greater ability to strike at Russian logistical supply chains within Russia so as to essentially deprive the troops at the front lines from the ability to fight or sustain themselves. Unfortunately, both reluctance to provide extended range weapons and the US Congress dithering about providing the promised aid (weapons) package has left Ukraine with sparse capability to do so despite some high provide successes.
What should Ukraine do now? They don’t really have a choice; this is an existential war for Ukraine as a retreat and takeover by the Russian military would be followed by eradication of Ukrainian culture (just as Russia has attempted to do in the Donbas) and likely famine and ‘relocation’ of all able-bodied people to faced labor camps. There is a long cultural memory of what the Russian-dominated leadership of the Soviet Union did to Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s, and nobody is under any illusion that Putin would be any more benevolent than Stalin. They will keep fighting until they run out of ammo, and then pick up sticks and rocks and continue fighting regardless of what some Western pundits think about giving up Ukraine to Putin as a sop to keep him from nuclear saber-rattling.
Stranger
I’d agree with all that. The article implies that solidarity is fraying as tensions rise. I can’t see any compromise as to the 1991 borders, but the article implies this is an unrealistic goal. But of course it also says the Ukrainians need far more material to successfully strike in Russian territory. And yet, it seems they still did exactly that. (Gift link.)
Ukraine isn’t part of NATO
True enough… not yet. So to rephrase, aren’t there any Western European countries that can help out right now? Why does the future of Ukraine solely depend upon the generosity of the US?
The United States is the only NATO member with large stockpiles of surplus materiel and weapon systems, and (at least ostensibly) the means to produce more, and is also insulated from any conventional unpleasantness in Europe due to the large body of water in between.
Stranger
So the UK, France, Germany, and the rest of Western Europe are afraid to aid Ukraine and piss off Russia? Two of those countries have nuclear weapons to defend themselves. What are they afraid of?
Both the UK and Germany have declined in military spending as a percentage of GDP consistently since 1990. German defense spending at been significantly less than 2% since 2000, and has only increased slightly since 2018. UK defense spending has been higher (generally around 2.5% of GDP since 2000 (declining since the 2007/8 global financial crisis), although much of this was on their naval power, in particular their Vanguard submarines and associated Trident deterrent, and the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers; land power and infantry has declined significantly. In real terms, the absolute spending of both nations is less than 10% of US defense, and neither nation has large stockpiles of ammunition (especially not compatible with the former Soviet weapons largely in use in Ukraine) nor a means of domestic production. France has also been low and declining on the same trends, although they have recently been ramping up both acquisition and domestic production capacity, presumably with uncertainty over the stability of a post-NATO Europe. (The French have famously been dubious about the efficacy and assurance on NATO commitments for reasons both obvious and less so.)
I believe Poland has actually been the largest contributor by volume to materiel to the Ukrainian defense effort, albeit largely from Cold War stockpiles of Warsaw Pact weapons. Poland, however, has its own very real security concerns with respect to a Putin-led Russia, and has repeatedly tried to negotiate deals where it provides its older inventories in exchange for favorable deals to purchase modern weapon systems from the US only to be slow-rolled. Poland also lacks much in the way of domestic defense manufacturing although I expect they’re trying to scale up as well
Regarding the statement of the UK and France having “nuclear weapons to defend themselves”; it should be understood that nuclear weapons provide deterrence, not defense. That is, their political utility is in providing retaliatory capability in the case of an attack with the implicit threat that the aggressor will receive as good as they have sent. This would seem to be a good deterrence to a sensible ally, but Putin has already demonstrated that he doesn’t play by conventional rules of international politics, and with Russia facing a potentially existential demographic and fiscal collapse, Putin may elect to role the dice on nuclear brinkmanship (and in fact has already make barely veiled threats). Whether the Russian nuclear arsenal is as much of a paper tiger as its hobbled conventional military is an unknown but while it is clear that corruption has bled their defense industry and conventional military forces badly, Russia has spent the last two decades upgrading and deploying nuclear weapon delivery systems. People have spent the last thirty-odd years poo-poohing the notion that a nuclear exchange in Europe was even plausible but the reality is that we are probably as close to a nuclear conflict as at any point during the Cold War, and with multiple parties with different objectives and agendas, which negates the underlying assumptions of Assured Deterrence and in general poses an unstable deterrence scenario.
Stranger
Not afraid, but terribly under-armed. We had 70 CAESAR mobile artillery and send about 30 of them to Ukraine. Nexer is now producing 8 to10 per year. That’s not exactly WW1 level of production or stockpile.
Germany (or rather PM Scholz) is retaining the more modern versions of Leopard, and the long range missile, perhaps hoping Russia to resume their provision of low price gas and oil.
UK is in deep trouble with the aftermath of Brexit (maybe engineered by Russia…)
France is starting to prepare for a non-US backed NATO, in case a certain candidate is elected in November. Poland, Baltic states, Finland and Romania are interested, other less.But forty years of peace have left us understaffed, under-prepared and generally at the worse military state since WW2.
I suppose Western Europe shouldn’t be that worried because it has NATO to fall back on… at least as long as the US is still a member.
With that said, both Ukraine and Israel, which currently depend on billions of dollars in US military aid, may be in for a surprise if Trump is elected and Republicans take over Congress. I would expect some, if not all, of the free military aid to Ukraine to evaporate into thin air. However, loans, of one kind or another, may be possible to any ally that needs our weapons.
In the meantime, with a divided Congress, supporting the current military aid requirements of both of these countries is at risk, and while Israel can hold its own against Hamas, if Iran was to enter the fray without any additional US aid, all bets are off. I expect Ukraine will slowly, but inevitably, lose territory to Russia as a direct result of congressional dithering… but time will tell.
We don’t have much to donate. Stock of military equipment, and consumables like artillery ammunition, have been pared down to the bone in recent decades. Industrial production capacity is gone, too - a long war, with WW1 levels of artillery ammunition consumption, was until recently seen as a very old-fashioned sort of war, that was unlikely to reoccur and maintaining domestic capacity, which could sit idle for decades, does not sit well on the balance sheet for profit-making companies. There aren’t even any reserves stocks of rifles, not that Ukraine seems to be short of those.
Assuming the West refuses to help Ukraine by giving a lot more stuff, Ukraine’s only choice is to forget about reclaiming lost territory, fortify the existing lines as hard as it can, try its hardest to get admission to NATO (which is tough since Russia can keep the war going indefinitely in order to prevent Ukraine from getting in, like how insurance won’t cover preexisting conditions), spool up its defense industry as much as possible, and try its best to persuade the West to help it with non-weapon means, such as sending frozen Russian money its way.
Total bilateral aid commitments to Ukraine as a percentage of 2021 donor country gross domestic product (GDP) between January 24, 2022 and January 15, 2024, by country. I don’t think it is at all fair to say Europe is doing little or nothing. As a prercentage of GDP the US has committed less than either Germany or the UK and a lot less than Denmark or Norway.
The difference of course is one of scale. A much larger relative contribution from Estonia as a percentage of GDP is still a tiny fraction of the absolute contribution of the US. For that matter France, which trails the US in terms of percentage of GDP donated, still has also contributed more than Estonia because of, once again, scale.
Europe has given quite a bit, but they only have so much to give without stripping out their own militaries.
Nothing about being at war prevents NATO from allowing Ukraine into the alliance as a candidate member. Ukraine doesn’t just have to worry about “fortifying the existing lines”; the Russian military has been striking into the heart of Ukraine and striking at schools, hospitals, shopping areas, and other non-defense facilities for two years. For Europe, “spool[ing] up its defense industry…” is more complicated than it might seem given a lack of facilities, native resources, and expertise as the post-WWII Western Europe came to rely upon the United States for a lot of basic resources and finished goods, and there is no legal authority to “[send] frozen Russian money” (by which I assume you mean from accounts and assets seized from private Russian citizens, i.e. oligarchs) without going through time consuming litigation.
And to add to this, there is now a very real concern that schisms between NATO members and ostensible allies may lead to general conflict within Europe, which was a notion broadly (if inaccurately) believed to be unthinkable for the last thirty-odd years. Türkiye is arming up to become a regional superpower over both Southern Europe and the Middle East; France is preparing to ‘go it alone’, and of course while the United Kingdom is still a part of NATO they have fractured the economic relationship with Brexit and could well decide that it needs no part in the military alliance, either. Although even if Russia succeeds in occupying much of Ukraine, it does not have the logistics to press further into Europe, the conflict has brought forth a lot of questions about European unity as various nations have debated how much support should be offered, and with demographic declines and an oncoming energy crisis, as well as climate-related economic and population stress (particularly in Southern Europe) the potential for instability and a collapse of unity among NATO members (especially if the United States continues to withdraw support) is not beyond plausibility.
So, no European nation is going to strip their own military bare in order to arm Ukraine, and in general the weapons which have been sent are older weapons that were scheduled for secondary sale or destruction anyway. The United States has its own problems producing weapons, particularly those which are affordable and can be supported without a vast and costly maintenance infrastructure notwithstanding the problems of its largest defense exporter (Boeing) and difficulties with maintaining domestic supply of critical materials. All of which means that just finding ‘surplus’ weapons to maintain supply to Ukraine is not a trivial challenge even if there were a concerted political will to do so. Fortunately, the Russians have their own substantial if not completely hobbling issues with manufacture, transportation, and training that have made them far less effective in practice than they appeared on paper, but they still have an much larger amount of conscripts and equipment to throw into the grinder than Ukraine.
Stranger
The calculus is tough since to some degree this is a proxy war. Although it is meaningful to look at contributions as percentage of GDP, gross amounts are also significant. That said, the United States should deliver promised moneys promptly and perhaps not support a candidate seemingly much more concerned with personal vendettas and Russian kowtowing than (in my view) wider American interests (with the usual disclaimer I am Canadian).
I see the term “proxy war” being used repeatedly but it is misleading and frankly prejudicial. Wars like the American involvement in the Viet Nam conflict (and associated civil wars) were proxy wars in that they were being waged over ideology of the supporting parties, and one could make the case that the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan was a proxy war in that it was the result of an intentional covert plan to get the Soviets mired in an invasion while arming the Mujahideen with MANPADS and other modern weapons as a part of a broader Cold War strategy. In general, proxy wars are fought as part of some larger political or strategic objective.
The invasion of Ukraine, however, was completely Putin’s idea and obsession; he was not, despite the claims of various conservative commentators, lured in by NATO powers, and at a couple of points the possibility of Russia joining NATO has been discussed. It is not a part of some broader strategic objective, and indeed, Western leaders were at a loss of how to respond (despite plenty of evidence that Russia was preparing for war) and NATO members are not of one uniform opinion on the degree of aid. The US was definitely playing a calculus on how much and what kind of aid and assistance could be provided without risking a broader strategic conflict (prior to that process being completely hijacked by the radical right wing of the GOP for their own political purposes in strangling aid) but I think everybody would have preferred this not happened, especially the European nations that had become dependent upon cheap Russian gas for heating and industrial use.
Stranger
By “proxy war”, I meant that because Western and NATO countries do not wish wider involvement, they are taking care to more or less supply Ukraine with arms and ammunition and money without invoking NATO-type mutual defence nor the politically unpopular decision to send one’s own troops. By this metric, Ukraine is a proxy for Western directness.
However, you are correct that I am misusing the term “proxy war” which implies (depending on definitions) either both sides are small countries being supported by larger ones, or that one side is fighting a non-state actor. I will stop using this term to describe Ukraine’s defence against Russian aggression.
Though there are few silver linings, even part of Putin (or those close to him) must regret either starting this conflict, or at the very least the way it has been conducted and its subsequent consequences. With the exception of Trumpian dittoheads, for the most part Putin has given new life to NATO, broadened its membership and emphasized its importance, exposed national corruption and incompetence, removed the myth of regional military expertise, alienated some allies, failed to achieve much to this point and publicized and popularized Ukrainian resistance. Which is not to say anyone wanted this, or that this conflict did not come with supersized sacrifice, significant struggle, superlative suffering, sizeable spending or Sisyphean symbolism.