Opinion | How Ukraine can make best use of the U.S. aid package

The Ukrainian aid story falls off the news cycle today after Biden signs the legislation.  Biden has gotten all the bounce he's gonna get from spending this money.

Did you know the unspoken purpose of the aid package was to obtain Congressional approval for escalating the war?  As Ignatius (WaPo) points out the munitions needed by Ukraine have already been pre-positioned in Poland.  Biden's gonna say he needed Congress to approve before he could release the war materiel.  (BTW, munitions and weapons pre-positioned in Poland aren't available for defending the United States.  Biden is lying, again.)  No, Biden wanted Congressional ass-cover to send new, more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.  Biden is trying to escalate the war without being held responsible.

The unbiased liberal press is lying to the American public about bipartisanship, too.  The aid for Ukraine has always been bipartisan.  The reality is that starting wars has always received bipartisan support.  (Democrats really have been for it before they were against it.)   But Democrats certainly aren't going to claim sole credit for Biden's quagmire.  And the unbiased liberal press patting Democrats' backs risks tying Biden's quagmire to Democrats alone.  No, the newsworthy aspect of the situation is that Republicans are opposing war in greater numbers.  Even the press can't spin Republican opposition as warmongering.  Turns out that Democrats' conventional wisdom that Republicans never saw a war they didn't like has really been just another political lie.  

Wouldn't it be amazing if there was, at last, a chance for peace to garner as much bipartisan support as has war?

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

The approval of more than $60 billion in new military aid for Ukraine feels like the cavalry riding into town to save the day for the good guys. It’s a moment to savor for a briefly bipartisan Washington — and even more for the embattled troops on the front lines in Ukraine.

But let’s be frank: Delivery of a big U.S. aid package will mean a continuation of this bloody war of attrition, not an ending. While it’s a psychological breakthrough for Kyiv and a setback for Moscow, any decisive change on the battlefield will depend on how Ukraine uses the American weapons — especially on its ability to put Russian positions in occupied Crimea at risk.

The potential game changers in the conflict are the newly arriving ATACM-300 medium-range missiles. These precision weapons will allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian-occupied territory in Crimea, Donbas and coastal regions — hitting Russian airfields, supply depots, staging areas and command-and-control centers within Ukraine.

The ATACMS “will degrade Russian logistics inside Ukraine in the near term,” a senior administration official said on Tuesday. “In the longer term, Russia will have to reconsider its strategy.” That might eventually open the way for a just negotiated peace.

Russian analysts recognize they’ve lost momentum. With the new American aid, “some increase in Ukraine’s defensive potential is possible, and offensive as well,” according to Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher for a think tank associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. He added that on a “symbolic” level, the U.S. aid “will clearly raise the morale of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Vasily Kashin, another analyst in Moscow, warned of new military pressure on Russia. “Ukraine will have additional high-precision weapons that it will use against our troops and our territory.” He added that new air-defense weapons for Ukraine “will again limit the use of Russian aviation,” which in recent weeks had been striking power plants and other targets in Ukraine almost at will.

The two Russian experts’ comments were quoted this week by a Russian-language website called RTVI. They were translated and sent to me on Tuesday by retired Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a former defense attaché in Moscow.

How quickly can the new U.S. weapons be delivered to Ukraine? William B. Taylor Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, believes that because the Pentagon pre-positioned ammunition and other supplies in southern Poland, the new supplies could arrive “in days.” Administration officials agree that some critical artillery ammunition could even be delivered within hours, depending on how many trucks Ukraine can assemble.

Ukraine has been running desperately low on air-defense systems, and here, too, congressional action will reduce the likelihood of disaster. Defending Ukraine’s skies is a complicated problem because the country has a mix of NATO and Soviet-era systems. Congressional action will allow quick shipment of U.S. interceptors, and the Biden administration is racing to get Soviet gear from partner nations that used to be allied with Moscow.

Ukraine’s sagging air defenses will also be bolstered by what the Pentagon calls its “FrankenSAM” program to adapt Soviet-built launchers to use U.S. surface-to-air missiles. That hybrid experiment has succeeded, the senior administration official said.

U.S. officials are urging the Ukrainians to use the new military aid to consolidate their lines and hold tight through the rest of 2024, rather than rush another counteroffensive like last year’s unsuccessful push toward the Sea of Azov. “We need them to build strength this year to be able to take back territory next year,” the senior administration official said.

The Russian analysts caution that Ukraine, for all its recent troubles, was not on the brink of collapse. “In fact … there has been no failure at the front, there is no abandonment of large and even small cities. Ukrainian servicemen are not surrendering en masse, etc.,” observed the RTVI commentary, adding that Ukraine has “an impressive number” of troops in reserve.

“The Russians are as tired and demoralized as the Ukrainians are,” argued Taylor. Though Moscow and Kyiv have both been buzzing with rumors of a big Russian attack, Taylor is skeptical. “If the Russians had the capability to break through, they would have done it” during the months of delay on the U.S. aid package, he said.

A model for Ukraine’s resistance is Finland, which fought off Russian domination for 75 years before finally joining NATO last year. That story is told in a new Russian and English translation of a book titled “How Finland Survived Stalin,” which is being closely read in Moscow, according to Finland’s ambassador to Washington, Mikko Hautala.

Joseph Stalin thought he could overrun Finland, just as Vladimir Putin believed he could dominate Ukraine. Each believed he wasn’t facing a real country, but rather reconquering a wayward remnant of the Russian empire. To paraphrase a line from the book: What is the idea of Ukraine? To survive.

Thanks to President Biden and a strong bipartisan majority in Congress — and most of all to what might be hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainians who fought through the darkest moments — the survival of an independent Ukraine looks more certain today than it did a week ago.