233 - Ukraine: A Winning War Plan

"Kicking Ass," if Only Republicans Wake Up

            Ukraine cannot easily win a war of attrition against Putin's Russia.  The latter has more soldiers, deeper supplies of ammunition (thanks to North Korea), more ready access to Iranian drones, and a vast homeland that is far easier to defend and protect from incoming strikes.  Most of all, Putin's Russia disdains losses of life among its conscripts, ex-prisoners, and foreign recruits; Russia is prepared to send wave after wave of human fodder toward the Ukrainian front, cavalierly taking heavy casualties. Furthermore, Russia has more time than Ukraine. It need not look over its shoulder at suppliers and supporters. All it needs to hold the line is cash from its oil shipments to China and India to pay over the top for munitions and other war materiel. And it has a domestic public muzzled by draconian sanctions against free expression.

Ukraine can turn the war around once it has control of its skies.

            Ukraine's determined repulse of Russia's original early assault on Kyiv in 2022 rapidly took the initiative away from Putin and his generals. It showed that well-motivated defenders could outwit and out-maneuver an ossified Russian command structure and out-innovate the invaders.  President Volodymyr Zelensky's inspired charismatic leadership and Ukraine's amazing esprit de corps fired up an entire nation and emboldened backers across Europe and the Americas. Throughout 2023, however, Ukrainian offensives have failed because of newly fortified Russian defenses up and down the 600-mile front, because of heavy Russian mining of their encampments, because of concrete obstacles that prevented Ukrainian troops from easily attacking front line bases, and because Russia managed to equal or better Ukrainian electronic equipment. It has perfected the cyber jamming of Ukrainian drones and artillery, often forcing Ukrainian bombing missions to abort.

            Since Ukraine cannot easily overcome Russia's demographic superiority, it must resume outflanking and outsmarting the behemoth on its border. It must become even more ingenious in combating Putin's willingness to wait it out and hope for a Trump victory in November. The two of them would then dance merrily around the maypole and engineer (Trump's Putin-pleasing design) the end of NATO and Europe. Any defeat, or even a perceived defeat suffered by Ukraine leading to an asymmetric truce, would encourage Putin to nibble at the Baltics and Moldova, and give him imperial ideas about Poland.

            The world cannot afford a Ukrainian loss, especially one largely caused the failure of the U.S. Congress to deliver replacement munitions, high-powered howitzers, and air defenses. Ukraine could win the next phase of the war if it had the wherewithal to control the skies over the Donbas and Crimea, and if it could deal sharp blows to the Russian air force.

            Ukraine has already demonstrated ingenuity in war fighting, ingenuity in repurposing old equipment, and ingenuity in attacking the Russian force's less well protected underbelly. Its ability to disrupt Russian Black Sea naval operations with armed underwater drones and special sea- and air-launched missiles has given Russia in Crimea pause.  Doing so enabled Ukraine to carve out a coast-hugging export route and to counter some of Russia's command of the Black Sea. Moreover, much of Ukraine's unexpected initiative in the Black Sea has been based on indigenously created armament innovations and improvements.

            Likewise, where Ukraine has advanced on the battlefield it has usually relied on overcoming Russian electronic superiority or tactical reprises to Russian numbers and Russian defenses. Ukraine has also managed with American- and European-supplied equipment somewhat to counter Russia's massive nightly drone and missile barrages.  In response, its own home-crafted drones and missiles have managed to reach Moscow and to cause injury in Belogrod and other cities closer to the borders of Ukraine.

            All of this effort and ingenuity will go by the board, however, if Europe and America's promised injections of cash and delivery of much-required fighting supplies is not voted by the European Union and the U.S. Congress quickly. Ukraine will be pulverized just as Bakhmut and Avdviika have been flattened if that support is reduced or its arrival slowed.  Hungary is holding Ukraine hostage in Europe just as Turkey is holding Sweden's accession to NATO hostage. Closer to home, Republican political opportunists are losing Ukraine in order to give President Biden a political black eye over excessive migrants at the border.

            As Zelensky said last week, "Giving us money or giving us weapons, you support yourself. You save your children, not ours."  He was appealing, passionately, to Europe, where $55 billion worth of military and budgetary assistance is being held up by Hungary and Slovakia, and to the U.S., where Congress has been slow walking the Biden administration's request for $61 billion in arms and money.  Ukraine cannot continue to combat Russia effectively without our backing.

            Most of all, Ukraine in 2024 needs to gain the electronic and air capabilities that it now lacks. Gaining effectiveness in both areas would enable Ukraine to overcome Russian doggedness and numerical superiority on the ground.  An American expert declares that "the key to dislodging the Russians is to subject them to relentless and accurate air attacks that are well synchronized with the maneuver of combined arms forces on the ground. While the Ukrainians are admirably using the weapons at hand to strike Russian forces both strategically, as in Crimea, and operationally, as in hitting command and logistics targets, success at the tactical level has remained elusive. To achieve a tactical breakthrough on the ground front that leads to operational and strategic success, they will need to be more effective from the air."

            Ukraine requires decisive maneuverability in the air, as this column has repeatedly advocated. More and better weapons would greatly help. As the commander of Ukraine's armed forces acknowledged months ago, only with both effective aircraft (where are those F-16s?) and new electronic assets will Ukraine be able to breach the mine fields, take out launching sites for drones and missiles (especially in Crimea), and employ its home crafted missiles and drones to best effect.  Armed drones capable of suppressing Russian defenses and more surface to air missiles to deter Russian pilots are absolutely essential. Unarmed vehicles to clear mines are required, too. Ukraine further needs to coordinate and synchronize attacks with helicopters, howitzers, and fixed wing air support.  Without these reinforcements, the ground stalemate will continue -- to Ukraine's permanent disadvantage.

            Ukraine's freedom and the freedom of Europeans and Americans -- as Zelensky rightly says -- depends on Republican extremists being overcome by a fit of serious sensibility.  Do let us bring back Sen. Robert Taft and Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, arch conservatives prepared to leave partisan foreign policy disagreements at the ocean's edge. 

            We abandon Ukraine only to risk abandoning humanity everywhere and law based world order throughout the globe. As a Ukrainian fighter in the trenches pithily told a New York Times' reporter this weekend:  "If our international partners moved faster, we would have kicked their ass in the first three or four months so hard that we would have gotten over it already...But it's been two years already."

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Let us honor Martin Luther King, a voice of reason and compassion. We need his leadership now, in these vastly troubling times.