“We are here to make an effort,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after convening dozens of nations in Brussels to pledge greater support for Kyiv.
The decision to supply Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons, such as long-range anti-ship missiles and mobile artillery, capable of destroying significant military assets or penetrating deep into Russia, reflects a growing willingness in Western capitals to risk inadvertent escalation with Russia. .
The support appears to have emboldened the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who this week vowed to recapture all of Russia-controlled Ukraine, including areas annexed by Moscow long before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion.
But analysts say that despite increased foreign aid and strong morale among Ukrainian troops, Kyiv and its backers can expect little more than a standoff with Russia’s much larger and better-armed army. Unlike Moscow’s failed attempt to seize the capital Kyiv, the Donbas battle has taken advantage of Russia’s military strengths, allowing it to use artillery strikes to attack Ukrainian positions and gradually expand its range.
Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO who now heads the Chicago Global Affairs Council, said the battlefield stalemate leaves the United States with a stark choice: either continue to help Ukraine maintain a potentially bloody status quo. , with the devastating global consequences that it implies; or stop support and allow Moscow to prevail.
“That would mean feeding Ukraine to the wolves,” Daalder said, referring to the withdrawal of support. “And no one is prepared to do that.”
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe ongoing international deliberations, said Biden administration officials had discussed the possibility of a protracted conflict with global spillovers even before February, when the American intelligence suggested that Putin was preparing to invade.
The Biden administration hopes that the new weaponry, in addition to successive waves of sanctions and Russia’s diplomatic isolation, will make the difference in an eventual negotiated conclusion to the war, which could lessen Putin’s willingness to continue the fight, he said. the official.
Even if that reality doesn’t materialize immediately, officials have described the stakes to ensure Russia doesn’t gobble up Ukraine, an outcome officials believe could encourage Putin to invade other neighbors or even attack Russia. NATO members, is so high that the administration is willing to do it. tolerate even a global recession and increased hunger.
The war, compounding the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, has already plunged the world economy, now expected to suffer years of low growth, into renewed crisis. It has also deepened a global food emergency, as the fighting drives up commodity prices and cripples Ukraine’s grain exports, which normally feed hundreds of millions of people a year — pushing some 44 million people closer to starvation, according to the World Food Program.
“While it is certainly a challenge, we are certainly not sugarcoating it, in terms of how to navigate these stormy waters, our guiding light is that the outcome of Russia being able to achieve its maximalist demands is really bad for the United States, really. bad. for our partners and allies, and really bad for the global community,” the State Department official said.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces tried to defend shrinking areas under their control in Severodonetsk, a strategic city in Luhansk province that Pentagon officials hope will soon fall.
In a sign of how Western weaponry has the potential to push the West further into war, a US defense official confirmed on Friday that a US-made Harpoon anti-ship missile had hit a Russian tugboat in the Black Sea. For the first time as part of Biden’s latest weapons package, the US has said it will provide mobile Harpoon launchers to Ukraine.
Ukrainian leaders’ long-standing ambition to integrate more into Europe moved closer to reality on Friday, when the European Commission recommended that Ukraine be an official candidate for European Union membership. Zelensky hailed what he called a “historic decision,” even though membership may be years away.
“Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We want them to live the European dream with us.”
Putin, lashing out at the West in a speech on Friday, said he had nothing against the idea of Ukraine joining the EU, but also warned that “all the tasks of the special operation will be fulfilled,” as the Kremlin calls it. invasion, and said his country could use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty were threatened.
Underscoring what Western nations say is a radically altered security outlook, NATO leaders are expected to reveal new deployments to Eastern Europe at a summit in late June in Madrid.
Before that meeting, General Mark. A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has defended the need to stop Russia with harsh statements, equating the suffering of civilians in Ukraine with that inflicted on Europe by Nazi Germany. But he also warned that while Moscow faces chronic problems in its Ukraine offensive, including leadership, morale and logistics, the numbers “clearly favor the Russians” in eastern Ukraine.
The prospect of a negotiated conclusion appears distant, as Putin appears undeterred, likely pursuing what analysts describe as a strategy of seizing the entire Donbas region and then offering a ceasefire that would freeze Russia’s control in that and other areas.
“My concern is that basically Russia on one side and the Ukrainians and their partners on the other are pursuing mutually incompatible goals,” said Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at the RAND Corporation. “That leads the Russians to keep pushing harder and harder and us to give more and more.”
Many experts believe the war is likely to escalate into a lower-intensity conflict or a situation like the one on the Korean peninsula, where fighting between north and south was stopped in a 1953 armistice with no formal end to the war. war. A heavily militarized border between the two Koreas has developed, with occasional flare-ups, and is a scenario some analysts predict could play out between Ukraine and Moscow-controlled parts of its territory.
“I don’t think either Putin or Zelensky can continue at the current level of combat for years,” James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander, said in an email. “Certainly for a few months, but unlikely years.”
As the conflict progresses, it is sparking conversations about what trade-offs the United States might need to make in its broader foreign policy goals or its huge military budget. The Senate Armed Services Committee, citing inflation and the war in Ukraine, on Thursday added $45 billion to the defense budget, raising the likely bill to $847 billion for the next fiscal year.
Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said the war also continues to eat up the bandwidth of senior American officials that could be spent on long-term planning and modernization. In the past, officials have cited crises such as the multi-year war against Islamic State as factors delaying a planned shift to focus on China.
“They continue to have to deal with Ukraine because the situation is evolving and immediate, and we need to provide whatever assistance we can and figure out how to support the Ukrainians,” he said. “But that means they don’t have the time and attention to press on those other issues that are really important, and those long-term changes that would be necessary if the US is really going to shift its attention and focus. to the Pacific.”
The Biden administration has promised that it will not pressure Kyiv to accept concessions to cement a resolution to the war. Officials point out that Zelensky, even if he were inclined to cede much of Ukraine’s territory, could face a revolt from the Ukrainians if he accepts Moscow’s terms.
“Our job is not to define those terms,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. a think tank event on Thursday. “Our job is to give them the tools they need to put themselves in the strongest position possible.”
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