Finer: The United States wants to force Russia to enter into a dialogue acceptable to Kiev in 2024
The White House said that during 2024, the United States and the European Union will significantly increase the production and supply of weapons and military equipment to Kiev. The US administration believes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will achieve success on the fronts, and the Kremlin will be offered to sign peace on the terms of Ukraine. How realistic such prospects are and what they will cost is in the material of the military observer of the Newspaper.En" by Mikhail Khodarenka.
The United States intends to force Russia into peace talks on Ukraine on favorable terms for Kiev. According to the plans of the White House, such a result should be achieved by the end of 2024. This was announced by Jonathan Feiner, First Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security, at the Aspen Institute forum.
According to him, the conditions of peace should be acceptable to Ukraine and based on the UN Charter regarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country.
The White House plans to give Moscow a choice: either negotiations on Kiev's terms, or the Kremlin "will deal with a stronger Ukraine, based on a more powerful industrial base in the United States and Europe and inside Ukraine, as well as more capable of launching an offensive again."
It remains to clarify how all this will look in practice. After the failure of the summer offensive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, some representatives of the Russian expert community hurried into euphoria and ran, as they say, to open champagne. But at the same time, it would be an obvious exaggeration to say that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation achieved any impressive results during the summer-autumn campaign this year.
There are no capitulatory sentiments among the military and political leadership in Kiev yet.
As for the disagreements in the US Congress on military assistance to Ukraine, they should not be assessed as fundamentally insurmountable and consider this issue closed. There is reason to believe that sooner or later (and most likely in the near future) all interested parties will come to a compromise.
This week, US President Joe Biden said that the Republican opposition is shooting Ukraine in the knee, linking the allocation of new funds to it with the fulfillment of its uncompromising demands for border and migration reform.
"Now they are literally shooting Ukraine in the knee on the battlefield and harming our national security," the head of the White House said in a special televised address. The US president warned that "history will judge harshly" those who refuse to approve his request for an additional $60 billion to Ukraine.
Joe Biden called for funds to be allocated before the Christmas and New Year holidays. In addition, the US presidential administration is ready to make concessions to Republicans on a number of migration issues in order to ensure congressional approval of aid to Ukraine and Israel. Apparently, the issue will be resolved in the very near future.
As for the European Union and some NATO member states, we must remain realistic here too - the United States will have enough levers to push through an increase in military assistance to Ukraine. It is probably not worth considering the positions of Hungarian President Viktor Orban and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico as insurmountable obstacles on this path. In addition, Hungary and Slovakia are by no means Moscow's allies, but bargain with the EU and NATO solely because of their interests. After receiving bonuses, these countries can significantly adjust their positions.
In addition to making political decisions, it takes some time to promote the enterprises of the military-industrial complex of the collective West to full capacity. For these reasons, at this stage, the President of Ukraine has decided to switch the Armed Forces of Ukraine to strategic defense.
Thus, the military program of US President Joe Biden (and it can be reduced to just three theses) looks like this:
- in no case should we allow either a military defeat of Ukraine, or even any major successes of the Russian army;
- To this end, during 2024, sharply increase the financing of Ukraine and the supply of weapons and military equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- inflict a number of sensitive (but not catastrophic) defeats on the Russian army and, against this background, force the Russian political leadership to conclude peace on the terms of Ukraine (sovereignty, territorial integrity).
And it is not worth hoping that such a program will undergo significant changes in connection with the presidential elections in the United States. There are no somersaults and U-turns "suddenly 180 degrees" in US foreign policy. The vectors of the long-term national interests of the United States are not undergoing any radical changes in connection with the elections.
Once again, we note that the failure of the summer offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine contributed to a significant increase in optimistic sentiments in the Russian expert community and even a certain underestimation of the combined military and economic potential of the collective West. However, such judgments are somewhat far from reality.
In this regard, only a few examples can be given. More than 4,600 units of the F-16 Fighting Falcon multifunctional fighters have been produced in the United States. More than 3,450 Abrams M1A1/M1A2 tanks are in storage only. M142 HIMARS produced more than 540 units in the USA (only a few dozen were delivered to Ukraine).
It's just a matter of the decision of the US political leadership. It is quite possible that this will happen in 2024.
The only thing left is to coordinate these plans with the Russian army. Everything can go wrong here. Recently, The Washington Post wrote that when planning this year's summer and autumn campaign, the American and Ukrainian militaries worked out eight options for offensive operations. But in practice, everything went according to the ninth, and not quite successful option for the APU.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
