…and it looks like we’re doing it on purpose.
Ukraine is the poorest nation in Europe. After 1992 it struggled for decades to overcome the results of seventy years of Soviet misrule. Just as it looked like it was starting to get somewhere, Russian proxies invaded and occupied the most productive part of the country. Contrary to our promises, the West in general and the US in particular failed to provide the support needed to keep Ukraine free and whole. Nevertheless, Ukraine dug in, and held off the Russian proxies for eight years, meanwhile working to break the Soviet legacy of corruption and inefficiency and reform their government to European Union standards. Again the Russians invaded, and again, the West has provided less aid than was needed. Let’s break this down and look at some of the details.
In 1992 when the Soviet Union fragmented, the various component parts kept those forces and infrastructure that were within their new national boundaries. So, for example, Baikonur Cosmodrome was located in Kazakhstan, and so passed to Kazakh control. Ukraine inherited almost 200 ICBMs and another 200 medium and heavy bombers, with a total of 1700 nuclear weapons. They did not get the PAL codes, and so could not arm the weapons (although they might have used them as the basis for dirty bombs by using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive debris). Those delivery systems, however poorly maintained, and those warheads, however impossible to use as nuclear explosives, provided the basis for a minimalist deterrent force against Russia. Under intense pressure from the US, Ukraine agreed to give those up, in return for security guarantees. They didn’t get them. What they got was security assurances, that the US would look very seriously upon any invasion of that country.
To get an idea of the level of support that is possible, I note that the first shipment of advanced weapons to Israel happened three days after the 7 October atrocities, and US airlift aircraft started regular deliveries on October, with a total of 11 C-17 cargo aircraft arriving in the next ten days. US aid included our entire stockpile of Iron Dome air defense munitions.
We have thousands of tanks in reserve (including 450 tanks the USMC decided they no longer need). We sent Ukraine 31. We waited months to finally approve the shipment of ATACMS missiles, and even longer to approve the delivery of cluster munitions. We still haven’t delivered any of the late model, long range ATACMS. The tanks are obviously excessive to our requirements. The ATACMS and cluster munitions are all end-of-shelf-live models that would otherwise have to be disposed of at great expense. They are mostly being valued at replacement cost, instead of the scrap metal prices we should be using.
Finally, both the US Senate and House are holding up additional funds, primarily as a way of hamstringing a Democratic President.
If we were really serious about all this, all these weapons would have arrived in May, and the Ukrainian summer offensive would have had a chance of succeeding. Instead, we have greater loss of life, and stalemate on the battlefield, stalemate that only leans in Russia’s favor.
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