A heavily damaged building during Russia-Ukraine war.
Credit: Reuters Photo
By Marc Champion
It’s time to call ourselves out over Ukraine. Because if the approach of the West, and the United States in particular, doesn’t change very soon, the country risks being first pulverized and then overrun at enormous cost - to Ukrainians, Europe and the US.
No contrast could be starker, or frankly sickening, than the experiences this weekend of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and Israel, as each came under fire from intense combined missile and Shahed drone attacks.
Israel was left almost untouched by a vast barrage on Saturday, protected by its own richly resupplied air defense systems and the actions of the US, United Kingdom, French and Jordanian militaries that helped shoot down many of the warheads Iran fired before they could reach Israeli airspace.
For all the well-deserved criticism that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets for the way he has conducted a retaliatory war against Hamas in Gaza, this coordinated response was exactly how it should have been.
Such extensive and direct help cannot just be put down to Israeli exceptionalism. Jordan’s participation, despite an appalling relationship with Netanyahu and a population deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, attests to that.
Jordan simply recognized, as did the other participants, that Iran must not be allowed to succeed, because that would pose dangers well beyond Israel.
This is firstly because Iran has an aggressive, totalitarian and fanatically Islamist regime that’s engaged in suborning and destabilising the Levant around it.
Second, had Israeli cities and lives been destroyed in a hail of missiles and drones, it would have forced a rapid and harsh response, triggering a regional war that would send economic and security costs rippling across the globe.
Exactly the same is true of Ukraine, and yet it was all but abandoned when Russian missiles and drones struck earlier the same day. Nobody expected US and British pilots to take to the skies, but Ukraine’s allies are now starving it of the means to defend itself.
As a result, Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million, just 32 kilometers (22 miles) from the Russian border, was unable to deflect what’s emerging as a systematic air campaign to make it uninhabitable and ripe for conquest.
The main power and heating stations were hit. So were apartment blocks, killing at least seven people. The attack was just part of an accelerating bombing spree against the major Ukrainian cities still in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sights, including so-called double-tap strikes aimed at killing civilians first and then the rescue workers who arrive to help them.
Russia, like Iran, is an authoritarian state, captured by its own brand of fanaticism as it tries to resurrect a lost imperial glory at the cost of its neighbors. Putin has proved himself vengeful.
He has put his economy on a war footing and is convinced he is in a civilizational war with the West. Anyone who thinks he wouldn’t follow up on military success in Ukraine by turning his attention to Moldova, the Baltic States and the Balkans, while forcing dramatic political and security shifts in Europe, has not been paying attention.
There is ample blame to go around for this turn of events, but in order of culpability, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, backed by his puppeteer Donald Trump, deserves top billing.
His blockage of funding since October has played a huge role in ensuring that Ukraine now suffers a five- or six-to-one disadvantage in artillery fire, due to lack of ammunition, and has become increasingly exposed to missile attacks, for lack of interceptors that only the US can provide. Lives are being lost as a direct consequence.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban deserves a special mention in Europe, where he too has done all he can to delay European Union aid for Ukraine and ensure Russia prevails, dressing his stance in favor of Putin’s warmongering as a bid for peace.
Less egregious, but also to blame for an inability to think and act strategically is Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has provided significant help to Ukraine over time but has also consistently delayed the transfer of key equipment.
Delay matters in war because so much can change overnight. Like a central bank setting monetary policy, decisions on arms supplies and recruitment have to be made well in advance of when their impact on the front lines is needed.
And here, Joe Biden’s and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administrations bear responsibility also. Biden and his advisers have drip-fed the types and quantities of arms Ukraine needs in such a way that it can survive but not end the war - even before Johnson blocked further aid.
They’ve also been pressuring Ukraine not to strike at key Russian infrastructure, even as Russia fires on Ukraine’s from its territory.
Zelenskiy’s failure has been in summoning the political courage (no one can fault his personal bravery) required to mobilise more troops when the decision was needed last year.
The result is that Ukraine now faces a severe manpower shortage at the front. Brigades are understrength, unable to replace dead and wounded or to rest soldiers who’ve been holding the line for as long as two years under a constant shower of Russian artillery fire now joined by high-powered glide bombs.
This darkening outlook can still be turned around. Johnson, after months of obstructionism, has promised to hold separate votes on aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine as early as Friday.
We’ll see what poison pills are inserted, as a package passed by the Senate in February is broken apart. Kyiv desperately needs all of the $60.6 billion that was in it, and more specifically the weapons and ammunition supplies that the cash should have released long ago.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Rada, or parliament, finally sent a much-amended bill on mobilization for Zelenskiy to sign, the success of which will depend in large part on whether potential recruits believe there will be weapons for them to use and ammunition to protect them.
Despite not having a navy, Kyiv’s Sea drones have won a significant battle against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The first F-16s should be be flying over Ukraine soon, and the Czech Republic has organized an admirable campaign to secure 8,00,000 shells for its artillery.
Two of the best Western analysts of the war in Ukraine, Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and Rob Lee, of Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, recently returned from a trip to Ukraine with the following bottom lines - They found the situation grim, but not yet catastrophic.
The Russians have solved their manpower issues and are adapting, they said, but are still losing three times as many personnel and far more equipment than Ukraine to make only slow gains, despite all their advantages in troop numbers and fire power. To prevent a breakthrough, Ukraine must restore manpower, build defenses and secure ammunition supplies.
“I do think Ukraine can hold if those things are addressed,” Lee said in their post-trip podcast, adding that the officers and politicians they had spoken to were well aware of the task.
At that point, they should define a strategy for winning that no longer includes the unlikely goal of retrieving all lost territories. “But again, it depends on key decisions being made, and the sooner the better.”
With a starting gun now fired on mobilisation, the most important of these decisions will fall to Western leaders. Johnson, in particular, will bear a heavy and personal responsibility for the consequences, if Ukraine’s allies should fail or continue to procrastinate.