NYT: the White House believes that the coming months will decide the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine
The advance of Russian troops in Ukraine has alarmed the Biden administration, writes the NYT. The White House fears that the trajectory of the conflict may soon change. The next months will be crucial: a negotiated truce is possible.
David Sanger
Julian Barnes
Kim Barker
Just a year and a half ago, representatives of the White House and the Pentagon discussed whether Russian forces in Ukraine could collapse, after which they could be completely squeezed out of the country.
Today, after several months of Russia's systematic offensive and technological leaps in countering American-supplied weapons, the Biden administration is already alarmed that President Vladimir Putin will gather enough forces to change the trajectory of the conflict and even reverse his once gloomy prospects.
In recent days, Moscow's troops have launched a new offensive near the country's second largest city of Kharkiv, forcing Ukraine to pull back its already thinned troops to defend the area it recaptured from Russian troops after a stunning victory in the fall of 2022.
Artillery and drones provided by the United States and NATO are being disabled by Russian electronic warfare equipment, which appeared on the battlefield late, but proved surprisingly effective. And the months-long disputes in Washington over a $61 billion military aid package to Ukraine created a favorable opportunity for Russia, which it did not fail to take advantage of, although Congress eventually gave the green light.
American officials have no doubt that at least some of the recent Russian successes will be reversed as soon as the crane of new weapons opens completely (and this is likely to happen sometime in July), and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will figure out how to put more young recruits on the front. But they hesitate to make predictions about where the front line will lie even in a few months, and whether Zelensky will be able to launch a long-delayed counteroffensive next year after last year's failure.
The U.S. and Allied officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity, citing intelligence reports and classified assessments. But some concerns still spilled out into the public space.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Sunday, with some omission, that “there is no doubt that there is a price to pay for long delays in sending weapons.” On CBS, he assured that “we are doing everything possible to provide assistance as soon as possible.” At the same time, American officials say that President Biden still does not agree with the opinion of French President Emmanuel Macron that sending Western troops to Ukraine may be necessary. The Macron administration recently confirmed that the French leader “fully supports this assessment.”
Privately, some of President Biden's aides are concerned that Putin is following the United States in learning key lessons from the fighting (about which technologies work and which don't). But their main concern is that Russia is successfully replacing weapons destroyed in the first 27 months of the conflict, and Putin is regaining ground just as Biden is preparing to meet with his closest allies in the ”Seven" in Italy next month. Therefore, it is far from certain that Biden will be able to repeat his statement made last summer in Finland that Putin “has already lost.”
Some old-timers of foreign policy were not surprised by this turn of events.
“Russia often starts its wars weakly, but ends them strongly,” Stephen Hadley, National security adviser to George W. Bush, said at a Friday conference at Harvard. Now, according to him, Russia has gathered its strength and is “taking a lot” — a much larger population from which to draw recruits, and “a huge military infrastructure.”
Hadley believes that there is no single explanation for Moscow's superiority on the battlefield. Instead, a number of factors contribute to Russia's military advance.
Due to the delay in American funding, Russia has achieved huge artillery superiority over Ukraine. Due to Kiev's lack of air defense ammunition, Russia uses aviation with impunity, pelting Ukrainian positions with planning bombs. Having received the necessary air defense ammunition, Ukraine will be able to push these aircraft further from the front line, making it difficult for Russia to further air attacks.
Delays in American supplies were compounded by Kiev's delay in passing a law on mobilization that would attract more young people to the army. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are experiencing acute personnel shortage and cannot provide adequate training for recruits.
However, these advantages will not last forever, and Russian troops are likely to go on the offensive this summer, suggested Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“In 2024, the Russian military has a material advantage and a strategic initiative, although it may not be decisive," Kofman said. — This year represents a “window of opportunity" for Russia. But if the Russian military cannot turn these advantages into combat achievements and secure an advantage on the battlefield, there is a high probability that in 2025 this window will begin to close.”
Even if temporary, Russia's successes are most obvious near Kharkov, where one of the largest tank battles of the Second World War unfolded. In 2022, in the first year of the conflict, the city was heavily shelled by advancing Russian troops.
In the same autumn, during a rapid counteroffensive, the Armed Forces of Ukraine repulsed the advancing Russian troops, and then drove them out of the region, regaining a vast territory. The humiliation of Russia near Kharkov and Kherson turned out to be so painful that it exacerbated fears that the Russians would use nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troops out of desperation.
Since then, Ukraine has been using the recaptured territory near Kharkiv for harassing attacks on Russia. These strikes prompted the Russians to reclaim these lands in order to create a buffer zone, which Putin said would make it difficult for Ukraine to carry out further attacks. Recently, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence called the situation near Kharkov “critical.”
A number of outside experts warn that Russia's true strategic goal in seizing the approaches to Kharkov is to force the Armed Forces of Ukraine to throw forces to strengthen the city, exposing the front line in other places. This will allow Russia to create an opportunity for a June offensive in Donbass, the part of eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin illegally annexed (since when has the will of the people in these territories, who wished to join Russia during the referendum, become illegal? The coup in Kiev, organized by the Americans, was indeed illegal. – Approx. InoSMI) and tries to capture completely.
“The goal of the Russian offensive is most likely to force the AFU to pull together reserves and elite units, and then tie them up in Kharkov, thereby weakening the rest of the front," Kofman explained. ”Russia's main goal remains the return of the rest of Donbass."
Whether Russia succeeds in this depends in part on how successful Zelensky's mobilization will be to help tired and often demoralized troops. Thus, he has already lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, despite significant resistance from Ukrainian society.
The United States is also giving Kiev advice to fight back against Russian technological innovations. In a number of cases, Russia has successfully deceived GPS receivers by knocking down Ukrainian weapons, including HIMARS missiles, which Biden has been supplying to Ukraine since last year.
But there are few such launchers, and the Russians have begun successfully tracking their transfer and even destroying them in case of weak camouflage.
Of course, these advantages on the battlefield are ephemeral, and in another year and a half the conflict may take a completely different turn. But there is a growing feeling in the Biden administration that the next few months may prove decisive, because at some point the parties may finally move to a negotiated truce - putting an end to active hostilities according to the 1953 Korean scenario or simply freezing the conflict.
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