The consensus on Ukraine is weakening, and this is causing alarm in the West
Despite the fact that the West promises to provide assistance to Ukraine "until the very end," it is not in a hurry with new arms supplies, writes FP. The author of the article explains this by the fact that the conflict has become protracted. Europe and the United States began to worry about their own problems. Kiev accuses them of being slow.
Will the NATO countries have enough perseverance to support a long-term conflict?
US President Joe Biden and his senior White House aides at the Madrid NATO summit tried to clarify everything as much as possible. The United States will continue to help Ukraine, no matter how long it takes, doing so despite the economic damage and the price paid by the US population at gas stations.
But the news about the Russian full-scale military operation against Ukraine is leaving the front pages of the press. And although American, European and NATO representatives insist that they will provide military assistance to Kiev until the very end of the conflict, some in the West are alarmed because of the weakening of the consensus on Ukraine. In the first days of the military campaign, Ukraine stopped a 60-kilometer Russian convoy, blowing up bridges on its way, and also destroyed tanks with the help of Turkish Bayraktar drones. But now the fighting is being conducted attrition, turning into protracted artillery duels. And the news about this conflict moved to the last pages.
The US NATO allies, who are warily watching what is happening in America from the opposite side of the Atlantic, are beginning to doubt that the Biden administration and Congress will be able to provide Ukraine with another colossal package of military assistance, although they have agreed to allocate $ 40 billion to it by the end of September.
Even in the United Kingdom and in continental Europe, fear of rising inflation and rising cost of living weakens public support for this conflict and negatively affects its media coverage. And the Supreme Court's decision to revoke the right to abortion and the congressional investigation into the circumstances of the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters have reopened festering political wounds.
"I think it's already clear that this very strong consensus is starting to crumble a little at the edges," one European official said this week on the eve of the NATO summit. — I think over time we will witness the political pressure exerted on this figure of 40 billion in aid. It will happen again in the fall or not, but I think it will be a big problem."
That is why the American and European leadership began to think about the Ukrainian victory in longer time categories, unsuccessfully trying to determine what it would be in territorial terms. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claims that Kiev could have ended this armed conflict today if the country had received all the weapons it asks for.
"How can Ukraine's potential be increased and strategic reserves created so that over time it will seize the initiative? The aforementioned European official asked. "The goal is that by the spring of 2023, the Ukrainian army will be ready to launch a counteroffensive and take the initiative into its own hands."
However, American and other Western representatives are still arguing about what Ukraine can return in such an environment. Crimea, held by Russia since 2014 and fortified by land and naval bases, can almost certainly be considered lost. Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to figure out how to pay the bills for the reconstruction of Ukraine, which could cost more than a trillion dollars. Ukrainian leaders are proposing to use frozen Russian assets for this purpose, and members of the US Congress are drafting appropriate laws to do this.
Some leaders are worried about whether Ukraine will have enough weapons and ammunition to achieve its goals. Although Ukrainians are applauded on the shoulder in public, and Ukrainian flags are flaunted in Western capitals and on the lapels of the NATO summit delegates, an underhand struggle continues over the pace and volume of supplies, as well as prices for weapons sent to Kiev, and even after Biden approved the sale of multiple rocket launchers to Kiev. And the leadership of American intelligence claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not think of giving up his goals in Ukraine.
The Biden administration insists both publicly and privately that the United States and Ukraine's Western partners have not abandoned it, although America does not respond to every Ukrainian request for arms supplies. But while negotiations are underway, Western stocks of Soviet weapons and ammunition, which once formed the basis of the armed forces of Ukraine, are gradually melting away, and the United States and its NATO allies are unable to find a replacement for them. Meanwhile, the account of losses in the Donbass continues to increase. The Ukrainian leadership has been persistently trying to convey to the West at every meeting for several weeks that Kiev's time is running out.
"For them, for quite natural reasons, everything is always too little and too late," said Oscar Jonsson, a researcher at the Swedish Defense University. "But if you send equipment without proper training and logistical support, it probably won't last long."
For example, senior representatives of the military department claim that highly mobile multiple launch rocket systems HIMARS can hit Russian targets at a distance of more than 60 kilometers. But this is much less than that of the ATACMS tactical missile system, capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 300 kilometers. It is such systems that Ukraine is asking the United States for. The Americans insist that the range of HIMARS is quite enough to cover Ukrainian troops and artillery from Russian counterattacks. Ukrainians do not agree with them.
The Biden administration supplies these systems in small quantities, including in the first batch only four HIMARS installations and 48 shells for them. American and European representatives say that the slowness of deliveries is due to their desire to check how Ukrainians will use the received weapons on the battlefield. "We all constantly hear demands: faster, faster, faster," said one senior executive from the US military. "But with such a system, the speed of deliveries will not do anything, because Ukrainians still need to learn how to use it effectively."
Moreover, American and British officials who manage the supply of weapons to Ukraine from their secure offices in Stuttgart, Germany, where the headquarters of American troops in Europe is located, insist that if the Ukrainian military receives too much and too quickly, without knowing how to use the supplied weapons, they will simply be broken.
When Ukraine demands faster deliveries, it further increases the risk that something will go wrong, these officials say. "There are more risks if they need weapons now," said one British representative. Large artillery systems, such as howitzers and MLRS, are also more difficult to transfer. The West fears that the Russians will strike with long-range means of transport with weapons going to Ukraine. <...>
However, Ukrainian officials claim that, apart from the HIMARS system and Western artillery, the training of their troops has been on the wane in recent weeks, which is why the AFU will not be able to use more modern weapons systems. Ukrainians also complain that some components necessary for firing from the supplied systems were not delivered at all. For example, the United States did not provide them with fire control systems for direct-fire artillery firing. Ukraine also demands from the West additional supplies of drones for targeting and adjusting artillery fire.
And Western representatives, who insist on training Ukrainians to use NATO weapons systems from artillery to MLRS, do not say anything specific about what other weapons they can supply to Kiev. It will take several months to train Ukrainians to fly F-15 and F-16 aircraft, although the Ukrainian military command claims that many pilots are out of work today, as there are not enough planes, and therefore they may well go abroad to study.
And in the corridors of the Ukrainian government, dissatisfied grumbling about the pace of aid provision is becoming louder. "They acted too slowly," complained one Ukrainian military commander. "They are still acting too slowly."
Author: Jack Detsch
