By Abe Greenwald
Sunday, September 15, 2024
On the morning of July 8, I was in Kyiv visiting a
combined surgery ward and prosthetics clinic. To say I didn’t expect it to be
the most uplifting stop on my trip through Ukraine sounds glib. But I mention
it only because that’s precisely what it turned out to be. It was a remarkable
place. Established by the nonprofit Protez Foundation in Oakdale, Minnesota,
the two-story clinic is an open and sociable space where wounded Ukrainian
fighters and civilians watch technicians build their hi-tech limbs, work with
them on tweaks, undergo surgery, and finally train with doctors and therapists
to use their new titanium arms or legs to maximum capacity. So the facility is
infused with a kind of collaborative and surprisingly cheerful determination.
It was there that I met 22-year-old Vladyslav, a senior
lieutenant with a face at once chiseled and boyish. Vladyslav lost both his
legs in a Russian mortar attack but was eager to “recover and return to duty.”
Although I was promised a chance to see him try out his customized prosthetics
on a set of parallel bars by the window, I was ultimately denied. A barrage of
Russian missiles was rattling the windowpanes, and everyone decided it was best
to stay close to the clinic’s interior.
Only when I was leaving Protez did I hear the news. A
Russian cruise missile had gotten past Ukrainian air defenses and hit Kyiv’s
Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital. It would be the worst bombardment the city had
seen in months.
Okhmatdyt was still burning when I got there, and
volunteers were already streaming through the wreckage with loads of bottled
water in both arms, as if they were professional aid workers. The missile had
leveled one wing of the hospital and torn the façades off every surrounding
building. Cars were mangled and smoking in the parking lot, the ground covered
in broken glass.
As I look back on a morning filled with indelible images,
the most persistent one is this: a small group of Ukrainians wheeling a
miniature—that is, a child-sized—hyperbaric chamber outdoors. And while I
couldn’t see whether a sick child lay inside, I took note of one woman who was
tending to the little capsule quite maternally, fussing with its tubes and
cords amid the devastation.
A question naturally comes to one’s mind at such moments:
Why would Russia deliberately target a children’s hospital with a cruise
missile? It’s a multifaceted question, but not a mystery. There are, in fact,
several correct answers. One is that Vladimir Putin is depraved. In a long
career of mass atrocities, the destruction of one children’s hospital is to him
a data point. Indeed, another correct answer is that targeting hospitals is
just what Russia does. That’s how we know these war crimes are deliberate.
Russia has hit nearly 2,000 Ukrainian hospitals and medical facilities
throughout the war, including a maternity hospital in Kyiv on the same day it
struck Okhmatdyt. Putin’s forces did the same over and over when fighting in
Syria and Chechnya in previous decades.
But there’s another, more important answer, and it’s one
that the United States and its allies need to appreciate: Vladimir Putin’s
Russia is better at being monstrous than victorious. The Russian military is
inflexible in structure, poorly trained, disorganized, and running low on
fighters. Russia targets hospitals and all manner of civilian infrastructure
because it’s very bad at the work of traditional war-making: killing enemy
soldiers, breaking front lines, and gaining territory.
Forbes estimates that the July 8 attack cost
Russia between $200 million and $250 million. That’s what Putin spent on a
total of 38 missiles that ultimately killed an estimated 42 civilians,
including five children. The idea is to terrorize the Ukrainian people into
surrender. Because Russia sees that as its clearest path to victory.
***
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin
believed that Kyiv would fall within days and all of Ukraine would soon follow.
What’s more, U.S. intelligence agencies agreed. It’s been more than two and a
half years and Russia controls roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory—the
same percentage it had seized a month into the war. Russian advances have
slowed to a grinding pace. Meanwhile, its Black Sea fleet has been largely
forced out of its illegal occupation of Crimea and pushed back to its home base
by a combination of long-range missiles and ingeniously designed Ukrainian sea
drones. (Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs have since moved on to revolutionizing
air and land drones as well.) And, most humiliating, in August, Ukraine
launched a surprise border incursion into the Russian region called Kursk,
where it now holds roughly 500 square miles of Russian territory and hundreds
of Russian prisoners of war.
The operation in Kursk served several key purposes. It
diverted some Russian fighters from Ukrainian territory. The seized Russian
land could conceivably be used as a bargaining chip to bring Putin to a
negotiation. But notably, it’s the most spectacular refutation so far of the
false and widely held idea that Russia can’t really lose this war.
In the U.S., we tend to look at Moscow’s massive defense
spending and Putin’s willingness to throw millions of men at the Ukrainian
border, and we imagine that Russian victory will sooner or later simply
materialize. This is, to some degree, a residual impression left by Russia’s
great-power status during the Cold War. Today, it is a misperception that has
shaped American policy at the highest levels since the start of the war. It’s
why, in February 2022, President Joe Biden offered Ukraine’s President Volodymyr
Zelensky evacuation assistance instead of weapons. “The fight is here,”
Zelensky replied. “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
The fight is still in Ukraine. And the Ukrainians still
need ammunition. What’s most remarkable about the war is that Ukraine has
denied Russia victory this long despite continually getting only a fraction of
the assistance it needs from the West—especially from its most capable and
powerful ally, the United States. Time and time again, the Biden administration
has refused Ukrainian requests for arms and equipment for fear of
“escalation”—only to grant a portion of them after Putin has escalated all on his
own.
The pattern is long established. One month into the war,
Biden refused to allow Polish-made fighter jets to go to Ukraine. For nine
months, he denied Zelensky the Patriot air-defense system his military needed
before finally reversing course. The U.S. first ruled out sending Multiple
Rocket Launch Systems (MLRS) to Ukraine and then allowed them, with the
provision that they not be used to fire into Russia. Also months into the war,
the U.S. gave Ukraine High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), but only
after secretly altering them to preclude their firing long-range missiles. The
Biden administration didn’t send Ukraine much-needed Abrams tanks until 2023.
And while Ukraine had been asking for long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems
(ATACMS) since the start of the war, Biden balked until this April, when we
supplied the missiles on the condition that they not be used for “long-range
strikes inside of Russia.”
And then there are fighter jets. Ukraine not only lacked
the weapons it needed and was constrained by prohibitions on their use; its
outdated MiG and Su aircraft couldn’t achieve altitude or radar parity with
Russia’s newer models. Russian jets were launching long-range missiles and
glide bombs at Ukrainian targets from distances that made the Russians
invulnerable. For the length of the war, Ukraine had been asking the U.S. for
desperately needed F-16s to target and destroy Russian planes before they
launched their missiles and bombs. Again, fearing escalation, the Biden
administration refused to provide what Ukraine required to gain an advantage.
Only in May 2023, 15 months into the war, did Biden agree to join an
international coalition that would train Ukrainian pilots on newer aircraft
provided by other countries. It wasn’t until July 2024 that the first six
American-made F-16s arrived in Ukraine. Of course, by then, however, Russia had
had two and a half years to improve its own air defenses in anticipation. And
as of this writing, Biden won’t permit American contractors to go to Ukraine to
provide support and maintenance for the jets. Whether the F-16s can still be
pivotal in the outcome of this war remains to be seen.
So the U.S. has been too slow in arming its ally, too
restrictive in setting conditions on the use of weapons, and generally too
fearful of Vladimir Putin’s threats. The result is that Ukraine, for all its
unfathomable courage and boundless ingenuity, has been permitted to fight, but
not win, the war. If this keeps up, Ukraine could actually lose. While
we make too much of mythic Russian strength, Russia’s population is at least
three times larger than Ukraine’s, and Putin could force an entire generation
of Russian men to die for his war. Zelensky, more than cognizant of this fact,
chose to escalate on Ukraine’s terms and invaded Kursk without consulting his
dithering American ally first.
Ukraine needed to do something decisive and risky because
it’s become ever harder to push back against Putin’s piecemeal but inexorable
onslaught. Russia’s summer offensive, the largest since the war began, was very
costly both to Russia and Ukraine. Russia failed in its ultimate objective: to
create in the northeastern city of Kharkiv a buffer zone that would stop
Ukraine from firing on Russia’s Belgorod region. But for defending Kharkiv
while adhering to the Biden administration’s prohibition on firing into Russia,
Ukraine paid a tremendous price in human lives. And Putin’s recent advances in
the east have Russian soldiers inching ever closer to the city of Pokrovsk, an
important military logistics hub neighboring the prized Donetsk region.
Finally, Russia’s continued bombardment of Ukrainian infrastructure has had a
devastating effect on day-to-day life, decimating the power grid and straining
resources.
But the summer offensive has also delivered Russia its
highest casualty rate of the war, with more than 70,000 soldiers killed or
wounded in May and June alone. Neither Ukraine nor Russia releases official
casualty figures, but according to President Zelensky, Russia is losing six
times as many soldiers as Ukraine. Whatever the specific ratio, it’s clear that
Russia is now facing a manpower shortage. This is why Putin has recently raised
soldier salaries to 5.2 million rubles (roughly $60,000) for their first year
of service and is giving them an additional one-time payment of 1.9 million
rubles (roughly $22,000) for joining the fight. This in a country where the
average annual salary is a little less than $15,000.
It’s a mistake to view either side in this war as being
checkmated. Nothing about the fighting is frozen. If Russia manages to seize
Pokrovst, it could hobble the Ukrainian military considerably. At the same
time, Ukraine’s impressive performance this summer has loosened some of
its allies’ restrictions on firing into Russian territory. And since the July 8
attack, these allies have also pledged to step up their military and financial
contributions to Ukraine. But, as with America, it’s not always clear that they
will make good on their word.
***
The point is that if Russia could have defeated Ukraine
in days, it would have. If it could have defeated Ukraine in months, it would
have. And if it hasn’t defeated Ukraine in two and a half years, it’s because
it hasn’t been able to. Russia isn’t the fighting machine of Joe Biden’s
apocalyptic imagination. It’s a big, bungling mess that terrorizes civilians in
lieu of winning. If the next American president, whether Donald Trump or Kamala
Harris, were to reject Biden’s too-little-too-late approach and give Ukraine
what it needs when it needs it, he or she would surely go down in history as a
co-author of Putin’s defeat.
Biden has stalled on providing almost every piece of
requested American assistance to Ukraine for fear of crossing a potential red
line that might trigger world war or a tactical Russian nuke. But when he
eventually consents to each Ukrainian request, nothing happens. That’s because
Putin doesn’t want a full-on war with the West. He knows he would lose that.
What Putin wants is to swallow Ukraine. The miserable irony is that only if he
gets his way are we likely to see a larger war. A Russia that extends fully
into Ukraine, the largest country wholly in Europe, is more likely to provoke a
neighboring NATO country, even by mishap, and drag the alliance into a massive
conflict. And even if a NATO war were averted, the U.S. would spend more on the
alliance’s defense than we currently spend on Ukraine’s—and we’d do so in
perpetuity. Most important, if Putin is allowed to win, the United States will
have told every tyrant with a nuclear bomb that he need only rattle his saber
to impose his will on the rest of the world. His Iranian and Chinese allies
will be particularly pleased on that score. You need not be a diehard Ukrainian
nationalist to see the necessity of stopping Russia now.
How do we do that? Open up the American arsenal quickly
and place no restrictions on the Ukrainians’ use of our weapons. The soldiers
who’ve managed to preserve their country through two and a half years of war
should be flooded with the tools to drive out the Russians altogether or to
bring Putin to the negotiating table in defeat. This means we give them planes,
tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, the works. And when Ukraine wants
to strike Russian oil refineries, we don’t scold them, as Biden has done; we
applaud them for degrading Putin’s fuel supplies during war. The same goes for
all military targets in Russia, whether airstrips or weapons factories. The
current American proscription on Ukraine’s firing deep into its invading
enemy’s territory is very near a policy of sabotage.
If this sounds radical, it’s only because of how
comfortable the United States has become in indulging bad actors and bypassing
victory. In foreign affairs, we have grown unsettled by the idea of clarity
itself. As if the burdens and consequences that come with resolve are certain
to be disastrous, and ambivalence will yield a more favorable outcome. But
arming one’s allies to defeat one’s enemies is conventional foreign policy, not
fanaticism.
And, despite the warnings of neo-isolationists, we can do
it. Since the passage of the supplemental Ukraine aid package in April, the
U.S. Army has been expanding munitions production facilities in several states.
This is money going directly into American industry and creating many new jobs
in some 38 states. Critically, the U.S. is now set to triple its monthly
production of 155 mm shells, which Ukraine sorely needs. This means turning out
100,000 shells a month by 2025. That’s six times the amount we were producing
when the war began. Ukrainian fighters are estimated to need about 75,000
shells a month. Between our contribution and Europe’s matching one, Ukraine
will have more than enough shells. The U.S. also has plans to ramp up
heavy-weapons and explosives production. Updating the American arsenal is vital
in any case and should continue long after the war. The U.S. additionally has
weapons and military vehicles—including hundreds of tanks—that are sitting in
storage and could be refurbished and sent to Ukraine.
For those who still can’t abide American tax dollars
going to help our ally (even though most of the money ends up in the U.S.
economy), David Urban and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have proposed a
$500 billion lend-lease program whereby Ukraine would borrow from the U.S. the
money it needs for weapons. This, too, has its merits. As Urban and Pompeo
wrote in the Wall Street Journal, the commitment would “send a clear
signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.”
Whether through American spending or lend-lease, we must
arm Ukraine to defeat a truly defeatable Vladimir Putin.
My visit to the prosthetics clinic in Kyiv was
encouraging not only because of the innovative design of the place or the
good-humored courage of the wounded heroes I met there. I was moved, perhaps
above all, by the fact of its being a primarily American-funded enterprise, a
place where you walked in and saw the American and Ukrainian flags hoisted next
to each other in recognition of a truly virtuous joint effort. There are times
when we need to be reminded that the United States is a powerful country full
of decent, generous people. And so Americans give readily to help righteous
soldiers recover from horrific war injuries.
After two-and-a-half years of American irresolution, it
is time to remember that we, like Ukraine, can also be a brave country. The
future of the war is by no means decided. It is not too late for the U.S. to
start giving Ukrainians the means to win instead of the means to merely recover
and return to duty.
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