Ukraine’s audacious attempt to reclaim momentum on the battlefield may fail for want of Western support.
More than one week into Ukraine’s daring advance into Russian territory, Kyiv has publicly acknowledged the incursion and divulged the intention behind it.
“It is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Achieving that objective now involves “creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory.” At the very least, all operations that “inflict losses” on the Russian military and “their military-industrial complex” help bring a “just end to this aggression.”
The Biden administration doesn’t appear to agree. True to the posture it has struck since almost the moment Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine for a second time in February 2022, the administration has deferred to its fear of making any sudden movements that might antagonize the Russian bear. The Ukrainian undertaking in Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts is no exception.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
The Biden administration, which has said it didn’t know about the Ukrainian attack before it was launched, has barred Ukraine from using U.S.-provided longer-range missiles called ATACMS to strike Russian territory.
Washington isn’t sharing intelligence with Ukraine on targets inside Russia, said a senior U.S. official, who added that the Biden administration doesn’t want to be seen as enabling an attack into Russian territory.
If the Pentagon is neither allowing Ukrainian forces to target the troops advancing on it from inside Russia nor is it sharing relevant intelligence, the Biden administration doesn’t just want to avoid being “seen as enabling” Ukraine’s gambit. They actively oppose it.
Whatever the prospects for Ukraine’s success inside the Russian Federation, Kyiv has committed to this operation. That commitment has come at the expense of the Ukrainian position on the frontlines inside its own country.
Russian forces have reportedly diverted soldiers from some parts of occupied Ukraine but not from areas where the Kremlin’s forces are advancing on Ukrainian territory. In the Donbas, Russian troops are moving forward, capturing settlements and forcing Kyiv to order the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of over 60,000. Meanwhile, Russian forces have slowed Ukraine’s advance into Russia. And although the Kremlin’s tempo of operations inside Ukraine has declined in recent weeks, the pressure Moscow is putting on Ukrainian forces in Donetsk has increased.
“The Kremlin’s goal will be to turn Kursk into little more than an embarrassing mosquito bite amid a bloodbath inside Ukraine,” the Economist reported. “Ukrainian soldiers on the ground inside Russia say they are already beginning to see a different level of resistance. Losses are increasing. The Russians have reinforced with better-trained units, including marines and special forces.”
Joe Biden talks a big game about the threat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents both to the U.S.-led world order and the prospects for liberal democracy more broadly. But his actions betray the president’s lack of faith in his own rhetoric. Throughout Russia’s war, Biden has conjured up Russian “red lines” in his own head, scrupulously observed them only to allow Ukraine’s initiative to slip away, and finally abandoned them only when he was the last person to recognize how little bearing his solipsism had on Russian strategic planning. The invasion and occupation of Russian sovereign territory is just the latest tripwire that would supposedly trigger a global conflagration if crossed. The Biden team is right to be cautious, but overcaution has thus far typified its response to this crisis.
Ukraine’s audacious attempt to reclaim momentum on the battlefield may fail for want of Western support. If it does, it risks becoming not just a dangerous turning point in the war in Europe but the capstone in Joe Biden’s legacy of spectacular failures abroad.