“If the Congress doesn’t help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 8 April 2024
That’s about as stark a statement as you’ll see. And he means it. Ukraine faces no bigger disaster than losing its war with Russia, a war it did not start. Russia invaded this sovereign, independent democracy in February, 2022, because its egomaniacal dictator hungered to resurrect Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, and capturing Ukraine was the first step in his plan.
Tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians have died. And with the continued help of Iran and North Korea, Russian forces are now better armed than Ukraine’s troops, especially with respect to artillery shells. Everything Ukraine needs to repel the invaders is in short supply, and its soldiers are bone-tired. Russia’s success in taking the city of Avdiivka in February, along with its territorial gains since, have caused many to reassess the potential for Ukraine to prevail in this hellish war.
Of course, that reassessment might not be as dark as it appears to be if the U.S. House of Representatives would provide the $60 billion in Ukraine aid it has bottled up for two months. This failure to act is even more perplexing when one realizes most of the needed funds would be spent in the U.S., because American workers at American companies would be making the weapons so desperately needed.
None of this seems to matter to a few rabidly ambitious and self-centered members of the House who, on Donald Trump’s orders, have prevented a vote on the bill passed by the Senate in February. And Speaker Mike Johnson, a seemingly mild-mannered, deeply Christian, but very sly, backbencher, who woke up one day to find himself in the third highest position in government, is now trying to walk down the edge of a political razor blade while searching for some way to advance Ukraine funding without losing his new cushy job. He is not emerging as a “profile in courage.”
Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, it’s seat-squirming time, as losses mount despite the heroic efforts of so many to save their land. As Ben Barry, Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) puts it:
The IISS assesses that Russia can sustain its campaign for some time. Moscow has been able to bring on enough contract soldiers to sustain its force structure and should be able to replenish tank losses on the battlefield for two or more years. It also has put its economy in a war setting, with total military spending now representing one-third of its national budget and reaching about 7.5% of GDP. Supply of artillery ammunition, loitering munitions and ballistic missiles from Iran and North Korea also shifts the balance of firepower against Ukraine. That means that over the coming year Russia will probably be able to generate sufficient missiles and drones to maintain its recent level of pressure on Ukraine’s air defences, attack its defence industry and attempt to erode Ukrainian civilian and military moral.
Without American aid what this means is that, at best, Ukraine will be in a defensive posture for some time; at worst, it will need to withdraw and cede valuable territory to the aggressor. The dilemma for Ukraine’s army becomes choosing between a forward-defense posture to keep Russian forces from cities and towns at the cost of higher casualties, or pulling back to conserve troops. To prove that last point, President Zelenskyy said at the Munich Security Conference last month that the Avdiivka withdrawal was aimed at “preserving soldiers’ lives.”
And if that’s not enough, into this latest mess parachutes Donald Trump.
Last Sunday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post reported that Trump has privately said that after winning the upcoming election he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity. This plan may or may not be true, because in what passes for Donald Trump’s mind, pigs really can fly.
You will recall Mr. Trump and President Zelenskyy, three months into his new job, had an interesting phone call on 25 July 2019, during which Trump pressured Zelenskyy to open investigations that could damage former Vice President Joe Biden heading into the 2020 election. At that time, long before the current conflagration, all the former comedian and newly-elected Ukrainian president could do was smile.
A lot of flotsam has floated down the political river since then, but it seems to me if President Zelenskyy, who has grown to become Ukraine’s George Washington, was ever asked to respond to Trump’s brilliant diplomatic proposal, he might do so with no smile and two, well-chosen words, which Mr. Trump would have no trouble understanding.
