For months, Ukrainian fighters have been hopelessly overwhelmed by the Russian invaders in an unprovoked war, and Russia has been forced to cede more territory, all while the U.S. Congress is in turmoil. Morale is low.
Fears that Ukraine would lose the war due to lack of weapons began to reach a fever pitch. But on Saturday, the House finally broke the deadlock and passed $60.8 billion in much-needed aid.
With the Senate and President Biden poised to greenlight the package, perhaps the big question now is whether new aid is too little, too late.
What took so long?
The last time Congress approved a large chunk of new aid to Ukraine was in December 2022. Approximately $45 billion.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) I was against it at the time.as part of a broader $1.66 trillion spending omnibus, just days before Republicans formally took back the chamber.
By August of last year, President Biden I contacted Congress. It called for more aid to Ukraine – $13 billion for national defense and $8 billion for humanitarian aid – simply to tide Kiev through the end of the year.
Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Growing conservative resentment over foreign aid to Ukraine, bitter infighting within House Republicans, the ouster of the Speaker, the war between Israel and Hamas, and a protracted battle over spending all posed obstacles.
“The Ukrainians started showing clear signs of running out of critical munitions in late 2023, around November and December,” George Barros, who heads the Russian team at the Institute for the Study of War, told the Post. Told.
“Ukrainians really needed this aid, not today, but six months ago.”
As Ukrainians struggled on the battlefield, political paralysis and partisanship gripped the United States. Mr. Johnson, with no experience at the top of the party, was abruptly thrown out of the chair and given a terrible role.
He has been forced to fight political fires over various legislative battles, including spending and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Mr Johnson chose to address these issues before the thorny issue of support for Ukraine, which has divided his party.
“There were a number of important measures that needed to be taken and we got to work on this as quickly as possible. This is an important issue,” Johnson told reporters on Saturday when asked if the aid had come too late. answered.
“I think we did our job here and history will do justice to it.”
Is this enough aid for Ukraine?
Government officials seem to think so, at least until the end of the year.
CIA Director William Burns told Congress last week that “with the real and moral boost of military aid, Ukrainians can sustain themselves until 2024 and overcome President Putin’s arrogant view that time is on their side.” “I can do it,” he said.
But Burns said there was a “real risk” that Ukraine would lose by the end of the year if Congress failed to approve the aid, otherwise Russia would be in a position to “essentially determine the terms of a political settlement.” I warned him that he would have to stand.
“This was much needed, but it’s not a silver bullet,” Nicholas Rocker, a fellow in the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, cautioned to the Post.
Locker explained that 2024 was widely expected to be a difficult year for Ukraine, but battlefield setbacks caused by delays in aid were a major hurdle for Ukraine.
Added to this is the United States’ own shortcomings in producing critical munitions needed for a prolonged ground war due to industrial decline.
Russia is also widely expected to launch a major counterattack in the coming weeks. Locker hopes the package of aid could help Ukraine survive into next year, at which point military production could increase significantly.
“This aid will be enough to deter Ukraine for the remainder of this year,” Barros predicted. “There is a possibility that it will extend a little further into 2025.”
Some analysts believe that the previous batch of $45 billion approved in 2022 kept Ukraine in some good shape until around October last year, or about 10 months.
But no one knows how long that will last Ukraine.
Can Ukraine still win?
Ukraine defied many predictions, even within the United States, of an immediate collapse once Russian tanks began moving in, but then Ukraine’s fortunes took a turn for the worse.
The Kremlin is currently firing 10 times more artillery and 30 times more aircraft than Ukraine, says President Volodymyr Zelensky. recently estimated.
In February, Ukraine was forced to withdraw from the eastern city of Avdiivka, blaming the defeat on a lack of ammunition. All this is also undermining Ukraine’s morale.
Ukraine recently moved to lower the military draft age to 17, but it continues to struggle with large numbers of young people fleeing the war.
“We have a lot of people who are ready to defend their homeland. But, of course, motivation and morale can drop, especially if they go to the front line and there are no shells. When we found out, yes, we don’t have the equipment,” Zelenskiy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
However, there are some bright spots.ukraine claim to have been decimated For example, despite fighting on land and in the air, about a third of Russia’s warships were stationed in the Black Sea.
Some critics of the resupply plan argue that Ukraine cannot win.
“There’s no clear consensus on the definition of victory,” Rocker said, noting that he feels the chances of Ukraine winning have definitely increased now that aid to Ukraine has passed the House of Representatives.
“I define a victory for Ukraine as the Ukrainians returning to their pre-2014 legal borders, including Crimea, and liberating their territory. I think that is still possible militarily,” Baros said. Told.
“But that is entirely predicated on consistent and transparent aid to Ukraine moving forward.”
Ukraine also has a significant human resource shortage compared to Russia, which has a population of 144 million fewer people, at around 38 million. per world meter.
Given all these dynamics, some top foreign policy leaders are skeptical that Ukraine will be able to regain all the territory it has lost.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that “neither side will be able to achieve a victory defined in the most idealistic terms.” said.
Rather, Rubio believes the U.S. goal should be to strengthen Ukraine’s hand so that it can negotiate the most favorable terms possible.
Clouds of uncertainty over future aid
One of the major factors undermining Ukraine’s war plans is the fact that the flow of US aid is uneven.
“The approach we have taken so far has been to jump from emergency to emergency, wait until the situation is extremely dire, and then dump in huge amounts of supplies too late. And sit on our hands,” Barros said.
“This prevents the Ukrainians from properly planning how to conduct long-term defense, because they do not know what will happen in terms of resources.”
Further complicating matters is deep uncertainty about what the balance of power in Washington will look like after the Nov. 5 election.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson could face a revolt over his fight to support Ukraine, raising questions about how former President Donald Trump would respond to Ukraine if he wins the presidential election.
“He said that before. [back aid to Ukraine] But only in the form of a loan,” Caroline Leavitt, a national spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, told the Post.
Russian army becomes stronger
One advantage Russia has in the Ukraine war is that its military is battle-tested for modern, long-term ground warfare.
“No one in NATO currently has the combat experience that the Russians have in Ukraine,” Barros warned.
Unlike past ground wars, the Ukraine war has ushered in an era of hyper-transparent battlefields, where drones, social media, etc. can provide real-time data on the other side, making the element of surprise difficult to achieve. It has become.
“The Ukrainians have proven that even the best minds in the West do not have the military doctrine or technical solutions to figure out how to restore mobility on this battlefield,” he added.
Moreover, while Russia may have suffered heavy casualties and equipment losses, the war could lead to a surge in defense industry production that could make the Russian military far more lethal within a few years.
“The United States and the West need to consider Ukraine as the first line of defense,” Roker stressed.
He ominously predicted that if Russia wins, it could be emboldened to pursue additional territory following Ukraine, a scenario many Western leaders fear.
Diana Glebova contributed to this report.
