Biden’s latest Ukraine push, throwing down the kitchen sink

Biden has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine as it rebuffed Russian aggression since the start of the war in February 2022, though he has also been particularly cautious about what the administration is offering to avoid escalating the conflict. There have been several instances where the administration would deny a request from Ukraine for several months, only to later change its mind and agree to it.

President-elect Donald Trump indicated that he would push Ukraine and Russia at the negotiating table to end the war, while Biden’s motto was they will support the former “as long as it takes”.

However, with the arrival of Trump, Biden is making decisions to help Ukraine improve its positioning ahead of possible negotiations.

Earlier this week, Pres finally agree to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. Ukraine has been calling for the ban to be lifted for several months, and in May the United States agreed to allow it to use the weapons to strike targets just across the border as Russia launched an attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv across the border.

Supporters of Ukraine have said the president should have lifted the restrictions, allowing Ukraine to strike military targets anywhere on Russian territory that is within reach much sooner, while those who do not support continued US military support warn it could lead to an escalation of the conflict.

The administration further loosened those restrictions in May to allow Ukraine to fire across the border with Russia when it launched an attack in the Kharkiv region across the border. It has not, until now, been allowed to strike military targets beyond that area close to the border.

George Barros, a Russia and Ukraine expert at the Institute for the Study of War, said Washington Examiner that the decision is significant because Russia’s “vulnerable substation, where they have their logistics and supply lines, command and control and all kinds of wiring and fault lines” will now be possible targets.

Ukraine doesn’t have the arsenal to hit every logistics center, weapons depot or soldier behind enemy lines, but “it doesn’t have to have a one-on-one ability to hit everything to achieve the same degrading effects,” Barros added. explaining that Russia will now have to defend not only the front lines of the war in Ukraine, but also its supply lines deep within its own territory.

“It’s a decision that’s $1 short and a day late,” Barros admitted. “It’s a truism that literally for years, almost three years at this point, there’s always been a Ukrainian operational requirement to have to strike Russian territory.”

Ukraine has already started to capitalize on the relaxed restrictions with ATACMS.

The Pentagon gave Ukraine for the first time this week anti-personnel land mines, which are intended to be used against people instead of anti-tank missiles, which the United States has already provided. It was part of a new aid package for Ukraine announced Wednesday, bringing total US aid to Ukraine since the start of the war to more than $60 billion.

“What we’ve seen most recently is that the Russians have not been successful in the way they’ve fought, they’ve kind of changed their tactics a little bit and they’re no longer leading with their mechanized forces,” Defense Secretary. Lloyd Austin said. “They lead with dismounted forces that are able to move in and do things to clear the way for mechanized forces.”

The Biden administration has offered Ukraine dozens of aid packages worth billions of dollars, but has been wary of provoking a Russian escalation, while Russian leaders, including Pres. Vladimir Putinthey have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons.

Russia adulterated its nuclear doctrine this week, so that it would see an act of aggression against Russia or its allies from a non-nuclear state, but with the support of a nuclear country, a joint attack against it — which is a thinly veiled reference to the U.S.

“It’s another list of weapons systems and platforms from M1 Abrams tanks to Bradley Fighting Vehicles to F16s to Javelins to ATACMS, the list goes on and on, where I think history will make it very clear that we were late. providing these capabilities for the Ukrainians to have maximum effect and impact,” said Alex Plitsas, national security expert at the Atlantic Council. Washington Examiner.

“I think if we take an honest look from a historical perspective, you know, looking back into the future, there will be an assessment that the United States did the right thing in terms of supporting Ukraine, and that the criticism will be that we it took too long to deliver critical capabilities and that certainly has an impact on the battlefield,” he added.

When the war began in February 2022, the prevailing belief among officials around the globe was that Ukraine would fall to Russia within weeks. Instead, nearly three years have passed, Russia holds about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, has lost about 600,000 soldiers killed and wounded, and is using North Korean troops to bolster its own ranks.

“There is no doubt in my mind if you tell Vladimir Putin that a military operation, which he thought would last about two weeks, will end up lasting more than three years, with hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers dead, sanctions severe economic , thousands of tanks destroyed, the Black Sea fleet destroyed, thousands of infantry fighting vehicles, hundreds of planes, I don’t think they would have done it,” Luke Coffey, a National Security Expert at the Hudson Institute, said Washington Examiner. “Or he would have done it differently, maybe.”

The war is over the 1,000th day this week, a dramatic sign for a conflict not expected to last until the summer of 2022.

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Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, acknowledged last week that the Ukrainians “have shown a will to fight that far exceeded anything any of us anticipated” during an event organized by the National Security and Intelligence Alliance. . . Since then, the DIA has begun trying to create a methodology to determine the “will to fight” of a given service member.

The US underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight just months after overestimating Afghanistan’s will to fight the Taliban on its way out.