193 - Ukraine Battles for Control of the Skies, and the Sea: the West Needs to Act More Decisively
The Ukrainian war is all smash, harass, and flee. That is, the Russians cannot win on the ground so they are sending wave after wave of inexpensive Iranian drones to supplement missile attacks on Ukrainian grain-loading facilities, warehouses, and even supermarkets. The Russian aim is to pulverize Ukraine so that it or its allies plead for a bargained peace (and Putin thereby saves face and regroups to fight again later).
It is now well past time for NATO and the West to get serious. Washington and Brussels first quietly and then, if necessary, publicly should demand that Putin ceases attacks on civilians in Ukraine and on civilian shipping in the Black Sea. If not, President Biden and his allies ought to be ready to sponsor not more sanctions but effective surgical strikes on drone bases and missile launching facilities on land or sea. Clearly, reducing Russia’s ability to continue bombarding Ukraine’s civilian population from the air would more closely than ever tilt Washington and the West against Russia. That might back Putin into the corner; something that the Pentagon has long tried to avoid, because of Russia’s nuclear armaments. But our hesitation has given Putin too much impunity, and Russia too easy a war. It is now time to take “Responsibility to Protect” seriously; our reluctance to act decisively -- to deliver fighter aircraft and other capabilities quickly enough to Ukraine’s beleaguered forces – has cost too many thousands of civilian and military losses, as well as destroyed cities, school and health facilities, and personal livelihoods.
Russia has been getting away with too little opposition in and around the Black Sea. Washington needs to send warships to help patrol NATO waters in the western reaches of the Black Sea. An esteemed American admiral suggested last week that, at a minimum, American marines should be posted on civilian grain carriers transiting the Black Sea. We have been doing that in the Straits of Hormuz, to deter Iranian proclivities. We patrol there and in the Arabian Gulf. It is past time that we countered Russia effectively in the Black Sea. We may thus need to bring Turkey on board and begin to re-interpret the 1936 Montreux Convention as befits the current conflict around the Black Sea. (It provides for free navigation of cargo ships through the Bosphorus Strait but imposes limits on the passage of warships.)
These are all hawkish imperatives. But Russia has long crossed the Rubicon in Ukraine. They must no longer be allowed the kinds of overhead freedoms that are costing Ukraine so dearly, and prolonging an unnecessary and immensely destructive war.
Putin wants to destroy Ukraine’s grain export facilities so that Russia gains desirable markets, and thus greater revenues from its own fields of wheat and barley. The blockade of Black Sea Ukrainian ports hitherto supplying million tons of grain grown in Ukraine to poor nations in Africa and Asia is intended to uplift Russian revenues to foster Putin’s war effort. It also seeks to continue to degrade Ukrainian life, hitting as much as possible at shaky civilian morale.
The ruble is suffering. Even with clandestine transfers to Russia of significant amounts of banned war materiel through the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, and NATO member Turkey, Russia’s inflation is rising, Western sanctions are finally biting (at least for war-needed commodities), and – at last – consumers are beset with shortages. Concessionary sales of stupendous amounts of Russian oil to India and China has helped to stave off Russia’s economic collapse, but the Russian war and consumer economies are still –nonetheless – hurting. Washington needs to speak strongly and insistently to Ankara.
Ukrainians and the economy of Ukraine are suffering even more from Putin’s needless invasion and from his (and the Russian military’s) ability literally to rain destruction and death on civilians trying to scrape along in places like Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Kryvyi Rih. Even obscure ports on the River Danube border with Romania are being smothered, and Kyiv and distant Lviv are still being attacked from the air.
Last week, Ukraine admitted that American, German, Danish, and Dutch F-16s would not arrive before the winter, far too late to help with Ukraine’s summer attempt to charge through what turns out to be formidably defended and well-mined Russian entrenchments across the Donbas. And only last week did Washington belatedly agree to let Ukrainian pilots train on F-16s. Nor is it likely that Sweden will send its formidable Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine. That leaves older Slovakian and Polish supplied re-purposed Soviet planes to protect Ukraine.
Ukraine is making incremental advances toward the Sea of Azov in the southeast, but “incremental” means painfully slow, with cascades of casualties. Victory, even on slices of the front, is hardly assured or imminent. (A Ukrainian commander quoted chillingly in the New York Times feared that the war would go on for two more years.)
The cutting off of Crimea from the Donbas is proving harder to accomplish than many had hoped. So are Ukrainian bombardments of Russian supply depots and marshalling yards. Ukraine lacks artillery capable of shelling Putin’s forces from a great distance; Berlin and Washington have been deeply reluctant to supply such equipment despite Putin using that reluctance to pummel Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure over and over.
Ukraine has accomplished episodic salutary symbolic missile and drone strikes against Russian-held bridges leading to Crimea and in and around the Black Sea. Its twenty-two drone sallies against Moscow, however, have proved so far of limited value, with only the infliction of occasional damage on the Kremlin.
Washington, London, and Brussels must step up their military assistance to Kyiv and its troops. Otherwise the deadly conflict – with its immense daily damage inflicted on civilians and soldiers – will roll on and on. We must not let the nuclear threat prevent us from responding, especially given the upcoming American presidential election.
Indeed Putin is counting on exactly that … If he had a single strategy, it would be this one: winning not on the field of battle in Ukraine where indeed he will never win an outright victory, but at the ballot box in America where he, perhaps & quite sadly, believes he cannot lose!
Indeed Putin is counting on exactly that … If he had a single strategy, it would be this one: winning not on the field of battle in Ukraine where indeed he will never win an outright victory, but at the ballot box in America where he, perhaps & quite sadly, believes he cannot lose!