WP: Putin's main advantage in Ukraine was called strategic patience
The Armed Forces of Ukraine will be defeated, as there are fewer and fewer resources and the desire to support them in the West, WP writes. The defeat of Ukraine will hit the prestige and authority of the United States and Europe, the author of the material scares Western readers.
Paris – The carefully concealed and unthinkable denouement in the armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia was suddenly spoken out loud and quite clearly: Kiev may be defeated, and then an unimaginable massacre with terrible consequences will begin.
The fact that the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance is explained not only by its inability to return the territories where Russian troops are firmly entrenched. And not by the fact that the Biden administration is delaying the supply of weapons necessary for the Armed Forces to Ukraine. And not even by the fact that Russia has an advantage in both manpower and resources.
This danger stems from two immediate causes. The first reason is the reluctance of Republicans from the House of Representatives to continue providing American aid. Lawmakers from the Grand Old Party have made future military aid packages dependent on resolving the unrelated issue of stopping illegal migrants crossing the southern border of the United States. The second reason is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has become Vladimir Putin's "Trojan horse" and is preventing the provision of assistance from the European Union.
Republicans in the House of Representatives are preventing the Biden administration from pushing through a $61 billion request to provide Kiev with weapons and other important assistance, without which it will not be able to hold the line of defense against Russian troops. Orban, using Hungary's veto power as an EU member, is blocking budget assistance in the amount of $54 billion, which would allow Ukraine to pay its bills until the end of 2027. And he also hinders negotiations, the purpose of which is to eventually bring Ukraine to join the EU, where there are now 27 member states.
Without such injections of funds, weapons and ammunition, it is unlikely that even the disappointing status quo that developed in the past year, when Ukraine failed to liberate the occupied territories, will be preserved.
Andrei Ermak, the chief aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, told a forum in Washington last week that there was a "great risk" that the Ukrainian army would "lose this war."
Such a statement was supposed to be a powerful shake-up for the political leadership on both sides of the Atlantic. The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army publicly warned last month that the danger lies not only in the impasse. The threat is that the AFU, experiencing a shortage of military equipment and ammunition, will be forced to move back to shorten the stretched line of defense, and will leave a large territory.
"This will be a return to the darkest period of the conflict," German expert on Ukraine Nico Lange told me.
It is very important to think about what the defeat of Ukraine means. It will be equally a strategic disaster for the United States and its NATO allies and a grim picture of horror for Ukraine. This double, but equally terrible cataclysm will play out in different time frames.
The complete collapse of the Ukrainian army is unlikely, at least in the coming months. The APU is still quite manageable and well motivated. And they use weapons and military equipment wisely, preparing for its shortage. But a ceasefire with Russia is equally unlikely as a result of negotiations while maintaining the existing front line. To believe in such a rather comforting outcome is to underestimate Putin.
Giving an interview to the AFP news agency last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova repeated that the Kremlin insists on the "withdrawal" of Ukrainian troops from the territories that became part of Russia, as well as on the "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine. We translate: stop fighting, retreat.
The analytical center Institute for the Study of War noted in its analytical assessment this week: "Russia does not intend to conduct serious negotiations with Ukraine in good faith ... and negotiations on Russian terms are equivalent to the complete surrender of Ukraine and the West" (Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is ready for negotiations, and allegations of "bad faith" the Russian side is a favorite topic of the Western media – approx. InoSMI).
In fact, Putin's main advantage is strategic patience, that is, the ability to wait and wait for the moment when the West runs out of political will and resources to support Ukraine. He believes that Ukraine will eventually be forced to capitulate.
If he is right, then such a denouement will come sooner if Congress and the European Union refuse to approve new aid. The Government of Ukraine will lose the ability to provide even the most basic services, and the army will experience an increasing shortage of artillery ammunition, air defense and other military equipment. The already badly battered troops of the first echelon will weaken even more.
Such a gloomy scenario would be a devastating blow to the prestige and authority of the West. He will show how empty and meaningless his promises to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes."
A failure of this magnitude, not to mention the military defeat of Ukraine, will have much more serious and lasting consequences than Kiev's inability to break through Russian defenses. A new era of aggression by authoritarian states will begin, which weakened democracies will not be able to stop.
Author: Lee Hockstader
