Ukrainian fighting prowess and the intangible element of their fighting spirit are impressive and for now unshaken. However, there is danger on the horizon.
Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman
| Opinion contributor
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently appeared on Fox News stating that “defeating the Russians in Ukraine is the single most important event going on in the world right now. … There should be bipartisan support for this.”
McConnell is 100% right. This is a national security matter that must have unremitting, robust bipartisan support. Our leaders must continue to make this clear for the American people.
McConnell is also right that the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine has been insufficient and late given the threat that Russia’s war of aggression poses to U.S. interests.
Putin thinks Russia can outlast the United States
Vladimir Putin expects to outlast U.S. and Western support for Ukraine. He is banking on support for Ukraine softening and on fabled Russian military endurance to eventually persevere. His expectations for U.S. and Western support, like many of his assumptions in this conflict, have proved to be wrong thus far. Putin has also forgotten that Ukraine has equal if not greater reserves of endurance based on its own history.
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Russia’s population is more than three times that of Ukraine. The Russian military, despite catastrophic losses, still enjoys an equipment and personnel advantage. Moreover, Putin is as indifferent to Russian troop losses as he is to the pain and suffering of Ukrainian civilians.
To Putin, these are the labor pains necessary for the rebirth of a Russian empire in Europe. He will continue to direct his war machine against civilian targets, to degrade the will of Ukraine and its Western supporters.
I’ve been to Ukraine six times since last June and crisscrossed the country many times. I’ve visited devastated cities and been to within 20 miles of what just a week before was the front line.
My journeys have allowed me to appreciate Ukraine’s vastness and beauty. Its endless fields of sunflowers in the summer and now desolate fields of snow in the winter. I’ve observed how this war has vacillated from stalemate last summer to lightning offensives in the fall and again a return to stalemate.
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What has remained immutable throughout is Ukrainian resilience, ingenuity and steadfast commitment to victory. Ukrainian fighting prowess and the intangible element of their fighting spirit are impressive and for now unshaken. However, there is danger on the horizon.
There is an imminent Russian offensive and a second, perhaps larger Russian mobilization of military recruits. Putin’s prospects for victory, even if these events come to pass, remain limited due to Russian forces’ continued structural weakness – including ineffective logistics, deficient junior officer leadership and tactical incompetence.
Russian mercenaries vs. Ukrainian volunteers
But the cost to Ukraine will be high. On the battlefield, Russia uses Wagner mercenaries drafted from Russian prisons and poor citizens from its colonial periphery as cannon fodder. Ukraine musters volunteers who just months before were lawyers, accountants, professors and IT professionals.
Russia expends what it considered the dregs of its society while Ukraine loses is best and brightest.
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Ukrainian offensive capabilities are driven by heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and rockets. A year ago, most of these systems were Soviet-era relics.
Over the course of the past year, Ukrainian capabilities have been augmented by more capable and accurate U.S. and Western artillery and rockets. Recently, Ukraine’s supporters announced they would send modern tanks, which will be critically important to Ukrainian attempts to regain lost territories.
Washington’s supply of weapons and material has never been enough for Kyiv. The supply and military support are sufficient in the current phase of this conflict to prevent Ukraine from losing this war but not sufficient to empower Ukraine to win.
That insufficient support has resulted in what might have been a short war becoming a long, grinding war of attrition. Such a war favors Russia in the long run. Even now the tanks and longer-range rockets, systems that the United States and the West had previously consistently refused to provide, are not expected in Ukraine in sufficient quantities for months.
U.S. support has not been commensurate with the escalations from Russia. In the fall, Russia annexed Ukrainian territory, may have destroyed its own gas pipeline in the Baltic, rattled the nuclear saber and initiated a campaign against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. These Russian attacks on civilians have resulted in additional atrocities in Ukraine.
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In all that time, the U.S. response has been largely to deliver the same limited offensive capabilities first authorized in the summer – HIMARS mobile rocket launchers and artillery provided some offensive capability and protective air defense systems that allowed Ukraine to shield its civilian populations.
The recent announcement of Abrams tanks and Stryker infantry fighting vehicles are a new and important capability – but still many months from making a real impact on the battlefield.
A strategy making clear that robust support to Ukraine will continue accompanied by action is what’s needed. Signaling about tanks that are months away from arrival on the battlefield is not enough to persuade Putin to withdraw his forces.
Any effective strategy must include concrete actions. If a real strategy is developed and implemented, the message of unequivocal support to Ukraine would be clear.
Putin would understand that the support of the United States and the West will not soften. And that Ukrainian fortitude, backed by the arsenal of democracy and bolstered by continued U.S. and Western military support, will prevail.
Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman is a former colonel in the U.S. Army and a foreign policy and international law expert. Follow him on Twitter: @YVindman
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