The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.
Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s then defense minister assessed that their base line requirement for these shells is over four million per year, but said they could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025. This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.
Just this week, the top American military commander in Europe argued that absent further security assistance, Russia could soon have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage over Ukraine. What didn’t gather as many headlines is that Russia’s current advantage is at least 5 to 1, even after all the money we have poured into the conflict. Neither of these ratios plausibly lead to Ukrainian victory.
Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests. The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.
The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 every year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.
Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests. The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.
The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 every year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.
These weapons are not only needed by Ukraine. If China were to set its sights on Taiwan, the Patriot missile system would be critical to its defense. In fact, the United States has promised to send Taiwan nearly $900 million worth of Patriot missiles, but delivery of those weapons and other essential resources has been severely delayed, partly because of shortages caused by the war.
If that sounds bad, Ukraine’s manpower situation is even worse. Here are the basics: Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine needs upward of half a million new recruits, but hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men have already fled the country. The average Ukrainian soldier is roughly 43 years old, and many soldiers have already served two years at the front with few, if any, opportunities to stop fighting. After two years of conflict, there are some villages with almost no men left. The Ukrainian military has resorted to coercing men into service, and women have staged protests to demand the return of their husbands and fathers after long years of service at the front. This newspaper reported one instance in which the Ukrainian military attempted to conscript a man with diagnosed mental disability.
Many in Washington seem to think that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have gone to war with a song in their heart and are happy to label any thought to the contrary Russian propaganda. But major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are reporting that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is grim.
These basic mathematical realities were true, but contestable, at the outset of the war. They were obvious and incontestable a year ago, when American leadership worked closely with Mr. Zelensky to undertake a disastrous counteroffensive. The bad news is that accepting brute reality would have been most useful last spring, before the Ukrainians launched that extremely costly and unsuccessful military campaign. The good news is that even now, a defensive strategy can work. Digging in with old-fashioned ditches, cement and land mines are what enabled Russia to weather Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Our allies in Europe could better support such a strategy, as well. While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.
By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goals for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — are fantastical.
The White House has said time and again that they can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.
Tatsiana Kulakevich:
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues without a clear end in sight, Ukrainians are facing a cold reality. While President Joe Biden is in close contact with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Biden’s support of Zelenskyy does not necessarily signal continued financial support of Ukraine by the U.S. government.
The U.S. has been the largest single donor backing Ukraine since Russian troops invaded the country in February 2022. Since then, the U.S. has sent Ukraine approximately US$113 billion in a combination of cash, military supplies and machinery, as well as food and other humanitarian supplies.
Biden has asked Congress to approve another $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel and other allies. About $60 billion of this would be spent on Ukraine.
While the Senate passed this foreign aid bill in February 2024, it is stalled in the House of Representatives. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has not allowed a vote on the measure.
Zelenskyy laid out the stakes for continued U.S. support on April 8, 2024, saying, “If the Congress doesn’t help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war.”
Russia has increased its bombing of Ukraine in recent months, and the battle lines between Russia and Ukraine have moved little in the past year.
It is not entirely clear when and how the House will vote on Ukraine. Still, as a scholar of Eastern Europe, I think there are a few important reasons why the U.S. is unlikely to cut funding to Ukraine.
I personally believe Zelensky has already lost this war. When the Obama administration helped to oust the leadership pf Ukraine which eventually led to Zelensky, that is where the defeat began, with Crimea. And it is mathematical. Russia has stepped up production for the war efforts and has Zelensky outnumbered, with tanks, drones, jets, missiles, vehicles, ordinance, etc. We can’t keep up with the use of 155 artillery shells. The US took shells back from South Korea, and our own training for artillery has been canceled due to the lack of shells. If we had to go to war against China over Taiwan, we’d lose.
Nice essay
A big problem: each of the protagonists in this war has a different goal.
Ukraine: Regain the Crimea, subjugate the rebellious Donbass, and fully nationalize Eastern Ukraine ( ie, eliminate Russian cultural influence and replace with “ pure” Ukrainian identity); break with Russian/Soviet history to become part of European identity with EU and NATO
Russia: Stop the Kiev ethnicide against Russian fraternal population of Ukraine, retain historic control of Crimea and its strategic Black Sea naval bases, prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and bristling with US bases and weapons on Russia’s border, create a demilitarized or neutral Ukraine as a buffer; replace ultranationalist ( ie, nazified) Kiev regime with nonthreatening or pro-Russian govt
US: use Ukrainians to kill as many Russians as possible, maintain world image of US as super power with technology, weapons and military superiority vs Russia, discredit Putin and cause his overthrow, with a weak Russian national leader, use western agencies to network with anti-Putin disdidents, sow insurrection within the RF to break it up into vassal states, Russia unable to function as strategic rival to western world- order.