The $61 billion in military and economic aid that Congress just approved and Joe Biden initialed will not turn the tide and give Ukraine any kind of strategic advantage. That's the verdict of many Biden advisors, and it doesn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention.
“The immediate goal is to stop Ukrainian losses and help Ukraine regain momentum and turn the tide on the battlefield. After that, the goal is to help Ukraine begin to regain its territory,” said one of the officials. “Will they have what they need to win? Ultimately, yes. But it’s not a guarantee that they will. Military operations are much more complicated than that.”
"Russia maintains a manpower and weapons advantage, and it would take a lot to reverse months and years of territorial losses," reports Politico. Indeed, even with the $61 billion, Ukraine is going to have a hard time preventing any further losses.
That's the major question some are asking on The Hill. Can Ukraine ever expect to achieve victory? Or is it doomed to slowly be ground down by Russia's huge advantages in men and materiel?
No one questions the courage of the Ukrainian soldier who has held off a vastly superior foe for more than two years. But Ukraine's government still doesn't have a viable plan — an endgame — to defeat Russia. And if it doesn't have one or can't craft one, what the hell is it doing with more than $100 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars?
“There’s lots of debate about what a winning endgame for Ukraine looks like at this point,” said one senior Democratic Senate staffer.
For Ukraine, the only winning option is to convince Biden and some Europeans to enter the war and tip the balance of power in Kyiv's favor. Everyone sees it. For President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, like the French and British in World War I and the British in World War II, all that can be done is to hang on and pray until the Yanks arrive.
The Biden administration has long maintained Kyiv will decide how the war will end, whether by pushing Russian forces back across the border or a favorable deal at the bargaining table. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists his nation must fight until the Crimean peninsula, the eastern Donbas territory and other parts of the country are back under his control. Whether posturing or not, that stance commits the United States to a much longer conflict with no guarantee Zelenskyy will achieve his goals.
“It is certainly possible that Russia could make additional tactical gains in the coming weeks,” Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said Wednesday. “It’s going to take some time for us to dig out of the hole that was created by six months of delay.”
In the end, that delay may prove to be a godsend. It presented Ukraine with a future where it would be on its own with few resources to defend itself and the reality that its European "friends" would be worse than useless. It had to start Zelenskyy thinking of an exit.
Meanwhile, the parade of advanced weapons systems to Ukraine continues.
“The administration needs to send high-quality weapons like the ATACMS so Ukraine can tip the scales,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a House Armed Services Committee member.
Bacon should read the paper. We secretly sent Ukraine an unknown number of ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) which it used twice last week to hit Russian installations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. And, by the way, they are a very nice addition to Ukraine's arsenal, but alas, it's delusional to believe that they're a war winner.
Therein lies the biggest challenge. Anything we send Ukraine, including advanced jets, the M-60 tank, missiles, drones, and artillery — none of them are war winners or would radically affect the course of the war.
Only American troops could do that. Keep that in mind when Biden keeps insisting we're not sending American boys and girls to fight and die for Ukraine.
