By Jim
Geraghty
Tuesday,
April 11, 2023
President
Joe Biden, speaking in
Kyiv alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, February 20: “This is the largest land war in
Europe in three quarters of a century, and you’re succeeding against all and
every expectation, except your own. We have every confidence that you’re going
to continue to prevail.”
But
apparently, the U.S. government does not have every confidence
that Ukraine is going to prevail. Here is the actual assessment of U.S.
intelligence, according to
the Washington Post this morning:
Ukraine’s challenges in massing troops, ammunition and equipment could
cause its military to fall “well short” of Kyiv’s original goals for an
anticipated counteroffensive aimed at retaking Russian-occupied areas this spring,
according to U.S. intelligence assessments contained in a growing leak of
classified documents revealing Washington’s misgivings about the state of the
war.
Labeled “top secret,” the bleak assessment from early February warns of
significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls,” and the likelihood
that such an operation will result in only “modest territorial gains.” It’s a
marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the
vitality of Ukraine’s military and is likely to embolden critics who feel the
United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to
the conflict.
The
document adds that, “Enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions
supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the
offensive.”
As I
said yesterday,
this is bad. It
is bad that this assessment leaked; it is bad that this assessment of Ukraine’s
abilities in the spring offensive are so modest or grim; it is bad that apparently
lots of foreign-policy experts have doubts about the administration’s approach
but are afraid to say so publicly; and it is bad that Biden’s public assessment of the war in Ukraine is
the same rosy-eyed, unrealistic optimism that characterized his assessment
of Afghanistan, inflation, migrants crossing the border, and the Chinese spy
balloon. The
president is always telling us that things are going great and that we have
nothing to worry about, and a little later, we learn that the truth is the
opposite.
While in
Kyiv, President Biden also boasted that:
We built a coalition of nations, from the Atlantic to the Pacific: NATO
to the Atla- — in the Atlantic; Japan in the Pacific. I mean, across the —
across the world, the number of nations stood up — over 50 — to help Ukraine
defend itself with unprecedented military, economic, and humanitarian support.
We united the leading economies of the world to impose unprecedented cost that
are squeezing Russia’s economic lifelines.
Yes, a
lot of countries around the globe are, at least publicly, denouncing the
Russian invasion and sending various forms of aid to Ukraine. But it is fair to
doubt how thoroughly they support Ukraine, or how much they really oppose
Russian aggression. Egypt, for example, is officially neutral, and it voted to
condemn the Russian invasion at the United Nations. The Egyptian
Red Crescent helped evacuate Egyptian students and families after they had fled to Poland and
Romania, and, working alongside the Polish and Romanian Red Cross Societies,
established two relief centers at the Ukrainian–Romanian and Ukrainian–Polish
borders. Egypt imports a lot of wheat, corn, and sunflower-seed oil from
Ukraine.
Oh, but
apparently, the Egyptian
government also explored the option of secretly selling rockets to Russia, according to the leaked documents:
President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi of Egypt, one of America’s closest allies
in the Middle East and a major recipient of U.S. aid, recently ordered
subordinates to produce up to 40,000 rockets to be covertly shipped to Russia,
according to a leaked U.S. intelligence document.
A portion of a top secret document, dated Feb. 17, summarizes purported
conversations between Sisi and senior Egyptian military officials and also
references plans to supply Russia with artillery rounds and gunpowder. In the
document, Sisi instructs the officials to keep the production and shipment of
the rockets secret “to avoid problems with the West.”
President
Biden likes to boast
that “nobody” f-words with him. Well, apparently the Egyptians are willing to mess around, and do not
fear what they will find out. Keep in mind, the U.S. usually provides Egypt with
$1.3 billion in military aid each year and a separate $174
million or so in foreign aid.
Wait,
there’s more. The Associated
Press finds documents indicating the government of the United Arab Emirates is
building a closer relationship with the Russian FSB:
U.S. spies caught Russian intelligence officers boasting that they had
convinced the oil-rich United Arab Emirates “to work together against US and UK
intelligence agencies,” according to a purported American document posted
online as part of a major U.S.
intelligence breach.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the document, which bore known
top-secret markings and was viewed by The Associated Press. The Emirati
government on Monday dismissed any accusation that the UAE had deepened ties
with Russian intelligence as “categorically false.”
But the U.S. has had growing concerns that the UAE was
allowing Russia and Russians to thwart sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile,
Russia is still finding plenty of open markets for its energy exports; oil exports to
India have increased 2,200 percent. Russia claims that it
has rerouted its oil from the European market to buyers in Asia, Africa, Latin
America, and the Middle East, although oil and gas production were expected to decline this year
because of the sanctions and a lack of access to those European consumers. And
there’s considerable
evidence that a decent amount of Russian oil is still ending up used by European
consumers after transiting through middlemen to work around the sanctions.
Publicly,
many nations of the world are denouncing the Russian invasion. Secretly,
apparently a lot of regimes are eager to cut a deal with Putin. In Kyiv, Biden
boasted that, “Russia’s economy is now a backwater, isolated and
struggling.” That’s not
really the case,
and it’s unclear whether the president is just spinning or whether he’s being
accurately briefed — or whether he just sees and hears what he wants to see and
hear.
Last
month, this newsletter noted that immediately after the downing of the MQ-9
Reaper drone, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Russian
counterpart and told him that the “United States
will fly and operate wherever international law allows,” including in air space
near Ukraine. Then,
a week later, the administration revealed that
the drones have altered their routes and are staying further away from Ukraine “to avoid being too
provocative.”
A map on the document shows a boundary drawn over sections of the Black
Sea to mark where surveillance planes may fly. It appears to begin about 12
miles off the coast of Crimea, adhering to international law. The map also
includes a second line about 50 miles from the shore labeled “SECDEF Directed
Standoff,” indicating that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin may have ordered U.S.
pilots to keep aircraft farther from the peninsula.
The
administration is not playing it straight with the American public when it
comes to Ukraine. An inability to see the situation clearly and communicate the
situation without any sugarcoating is a formula for long-term problems.
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