WASHINGTON—Forces from Russia and Ukraine are fighting, bleeding, and dying in the trenches of Europe’s frozen east.
After so much gore, however, the end of this conflict still seems distant, and none in power appear confident that it'll go their way.
A wild card in all this is the United States and the question of whether the world’s greatest military power can or will continue to provide direct security assistance to Ukraine.
The Biden administration, which pledged only months ago to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, is on the back foot, and money for a war on the other side of the world has run out.
Russia is waiting and eager for the opportunity to seize what it has been denied—at least, that’s what White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
“There’s significant risks to the Ukrainian armed forces if foreign aid and assistance dries up and we’re not able to continue to support them in their fight,” Mr. Kirby told The Epoch Times in December 2023.
“Ukraine is under significant threat right now from Russia, particularly from the air and drone and missile strikes on their energy infrastructure. And we know that the Russians intend to go back on the offense, particularly in the east.”
Ukraine has fought hard and won back about half the territory initially seized in Russia’s full-scale invasion. But Mr. Kirby said he fears that Ukraine’s “ability to continue to defend themselves and to rid their territory of Russian soldiers” will be compromised without supplemental U.S. funding.
“They have clawed back more than 50 percent of the territory that the Russians first took in those opening months,” he said.
A Partisan Issue
Whether the United States will continue that assistance remains to be seen.
The drawdown involves the United States transferring weapons directly to Ukraine from its own stockpiles and then spending the money to replenish its own stores.
The Pentagon has all but run out of money to replenish its stocks, so most military aid to Ukraine has, for the time being, halted.
The supplemental bill has stalled in Congress, where a partisan fight over its scope and priorities has erupted, throwing the future of the nation’s support for Ukraine up in the air.
Similarly, a majority of Democrats believe that the United States should furnish Ukraine with military and economic support for as long as it takes the nation to win back its occupied lands; whereas a majority of Republicans believe that U.S. leadership should urge Ukraine to pursue a negotiated settlement with Russia.
Even among Republicans in Congress, however, there’s deep disagreement about what aid should be delivered to Ukraine and why.
“I do not think that we should continue funding the Ukrainian war,” Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) told The Epoch Times. “I think it’s destroying the country at this point, meaning the perpetual war is destroying the country.”
Other Republicans agree with the need to fund Ukraine but have said that President Biden should give greater precedent to domestic issues such as securing the southern border.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) is among that group and has said that supplemental spending for Ukraine is a nonstarter until the Biden administration recalculates its spending priorities.
“It’s nowhere, and it’s not going anywhere,” Mr. Kennedy said to The Epoch Times about the supplemental spending package.
“Having an open border is more important to President Biden than aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, or Israel. Will that change? I don’t know.”
Democrats, too, are having difficulty imagining a new path forward.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Epoch Times that swift passage of the supplemental spending package is “unlikely” but that he remains “hopeful” for a compromise early in the year.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told The Epoch Times that he had “no idea” whether the supplemental request would pass but that Congress should approve “critical aid” to U.S. allies and partners, including Ukraine and Israel.
Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Nov. 8, 2023, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “playing a waiting game.”
Ukraine in a Stalemate
Most experts don’t believe that Ukraine would fall in weeks without the United States.However, many believe it’s likely that the embattled nation would be forced into a brutal stalemate with Russia and, at some point, would need to cede some of its territory to its aggressor.
Ukraine simply doesn’t have a viable strategy for victory without international arms shipments such as those provided by the United States, according to Peter Rough, director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
“U.S. security assistance is essential for Ukraine,” Mr. Rough told The Epoch Times in an email. “There is no path forward without it.”
Ukraine could likely continue to fight and bleed Russia without U.S. arms, according to Pavel Baev, a research professor at Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway, but it would be limited.
“Ukraine can defend against new Russian offensives, but most certainly will not be able to launch a new counteroffensive without significant and sustained U.S. military support,” Mr. Baev told The Epoch Times in an email.
Mr. Baev said Ukraine could muddle along through the harsh winter and spring conditions without more U.S. aid but would be hard-pressed to contend with Russia toe-to-toe during next summer’s military campaigns.
“A temporary pause, like the one happening now, is unhelpful but not disastrous ... [but] a permanent cut of the U.S. support grants Russia a serious advantage for the summer campaign season.”
Similarly, Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said it’s “very unlikely” that Ukraine could continue to conduct its aggressive war effort without U.S. support.
Ukraine could hurt Russian forces badly but not remove them from the occupied eastern territories, he said.
“If the U.S. stops providing support, Ukraine may find ways to continue resisting Russia for a while, such that Russia is unable to push further into Ukraine, but it will not be able to dislodge Russia from the territory it controls, and Ukraine is likely to lose more, especially along the Black Sea coast,” Mr. Wood said in an email to The Epoch Times.
Mr. Baev and Mr. Wood agreed that with European assistance alone, Ukraine could defend its current territory for some time.
European assistance isn’t guaranteed, however, and should U.S. assistance falter, European leaders would likely follow suit.
“Europe as a whole provides more assistance than the U.S.,” Mr. Wood said. “Together, support from the U.S. and European countries has enabled Ukraine to initially push back against Russia and then to frustrate Russia’s efforts to achieve its objectives.
“Support from Europe alone, however, will fall well short of providing the equipment and ammunition essential to Ukraine’s effort to sustain its operations against Russia.”
For just how long Ukraine might need security assistance is a point of contention. Some European officials have said that arms shipments to Ukraine will need to continue for years.
“I’m not saying that there will be fighting for 10 more years, but in order to keep Russia as far as possible from our borders, then this will have to be sustained.”
Reliance on Foreign Weapon Systems
A key consideration for many who are calculating Ukraine’s ability to carry on is its continued reliance on U.S. weapons systems.Sam Kessler, a geopolitical adviser for the North Star Support Group risk advisory firm, said he believes that Ukraine would need to drastically reshape its tactics and strategy to continue the fight without access to U.S. arms.
“It would very likely result in an increase in asymmetrical warfare practices and increased urban warfare as well,” he said.
Leadership in Russia, Ukraine, and the United States appear to be acutely aware of this dependency, Mr. Kessler said. That awareness itself “may potentially impact the way the war is fought by all sides as well as the future rounds of peace negotiations by the warring parties.”
He said a change in U.S. funding could be a “game changer” and compel European partners “to either back out of their commitments or upgrade their own military-industrial complexes for this conflict or future ones.”
The nation is far from being able to produce its own artillery, anti-tank, and anti-missile systems en masse, however. Likewise, the NATO alliance as a whole doesn’t currently make in a year half the amount of artillery munitions that Ukraine seeks to secure for itself.
Effect on the US
U.S. leadership must also contend with its own geopolitical position if it steps back from Ukraine.“The ultimate question is what risk to U.S. interests is created in the event that Russia obtains its objectives,” Mr. Wood said.
Conceding to a negotiated settlement with Russia at this juncture could encourage further military adventurism from Russia or other authoritarian powers such as China, Iran, or North Korea, he said.
The great fear is that a loss for Ukraine will cause the United States to lose influence abroad, diminishing its ability to shape events in regions of strategic importance.
“It is very hard to know the answers to these questions, but to the extent the United States steps back from supporting Ukraine, opportunities are created for America’s competitors that would not otherwise exist,” Mr. Wood said.
“It will likely make it easier for competitors to exploit the perception of U.S. weakness and reduced regional presence.”
Similarly, Mr. Kessler said whatever the United States decides to do about Ukraine funding will send “a message to its adversaries and allies in terms of future strength, power projection, and influence in an international system that is becoming more multipolar and competitive.”
If the United States were to step away from Ukraine, it could greatly impede the United States’ ability to build international coalitions later on, Mr. Baev said, such as in an effort to counter Chinese communist aggression.
“The prospect of discontinuation of U.S. support for Ukraine indeed involves grave risks for U.S. security interests, and the failure to repel and punish the Russian aggression may result in weakening of NATO and compromising the trans-Atlantic security ties,” he said.
Ukraine’s Future
It’s clear that U.S. support for Ukraine, or its absence, will play a critical role in determining how the war ends.The future may yet see Ukraine take back its occupied territories. More likely, it'll suffer a fate similar to that of 1930s Finland, which won a war against the Soviet Union but at great cost and loss of land.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press briefing on Oct. 20, 2023, that Mr. Putin already failed in his principle objective of “Erasing [Ukraine] from the map, subsuming it in[to] Russia.”
He has also claimed that Ukraine belongs to Russia’s “historical territories,” a term used to refer to most of the land previously controlled by the Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
At this point, however, both nations are bleeding badly, running out of fighting men, and at risk of losing all popular support to wage aggressive campaigns.
Ukraine is looking to conscript nearly half a million men for service following recent losses. Russia isn’t faring much better and is now promising citizenship to foreigners who agree to fight on its behalf.
Whatever direction U.S. aid takes, the fact remains that it isn’t currently forthcoming.
“We have no more replenishment funds,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Jan. 4 press conference.
“We have the authority to spend [$4.2 billion] from available funds but wouldn’t have the ability to replenish the stocks by taking money out or taking stuff out of our inventory.”
Despite that, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller continued to pledge support during a Jan. 4 press briefing.
“We will continue to support Ukraine ... as long as it takes,” Mr. Miller said. “That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023.”
For now, and possibly for a long time to come, Ukraine will need to rely on its own capabilities and do what it must to survive.
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