The West isn’t committed to a Ukraine victory
Our leaders are not fully dedicating themselves to help Zelensky achieve total triumph over Russia
Five months after Russia launched its unprovoked assault against Ukraine, the conflict appears to be reaching the key tipping point that will decide its ultimate outcome.
For the past few months, the war’s momentum has appeared to favour the Russians who, despite sustaining big losses both in terms of manpower and weaponry, have managed to maintain their grinding offensive to make modest territorial gains in the east and south of the country.
In the past two weeks, though, the arrival of Us-supplied high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars) on the battlefield has had a devastating impact on Russia’s ability to maintain its snail’s-pace advance. The Himars, which have around twice the range of Russian artillery, have had a similarly decisive impact on the course of the war as Britain’s NLAW anti-tank weapons did at the start of the conflict, when they helped to thwart Moscow’s initial assault on the capital, Kyiv.
The deployment of the Himars, which the Joe Biden administration first promised to provide in early June, has enabled Ukraine’s forces to launch precision strikes on an estimated 50 Russian ammunition dumps, thereby severely depleting the ability of the invading forces to maintain their advance.
Most of Russia’s territorial gains have been achieved by maintaining intensive artillery bombardments but, without regular supplies of ammunition, they find their military options are limited.
Ukrainian forces, by contrast, have been buoyed by the introduction of the superior Western firepower, to the extent that Ukraine’s commanders are said to be planning their own offensive to recapture the strategically important city of Kherson in the south of the country. Russia’s capture of Kherson in March was one of its few success stories in the early phase of the conflict, providing its only foothold to the north and west of the Dnipro river, and its capture is crucial to achieving the Kremlin’s long-term goal of securing a land bridge to the Russianoccupied Crimean Peninsula.
The retaking of the city by the Ukrainians would, therefore, constitute a significant setback for Russia’s military objectives, as well as providing Ukraine’s forces with the opportunity to target Russian positions further south in Crimea.
In a sign that the Russians are now very much on the defensive in Kherson, they have been forced to close the Antonovsky bridge, the only remaining Russian-controlled crossing over the Dnieper, which is vital to maintaining the invaders’ supply lines in the south.
The bridge’s closure was ordered after it was hit by Ukrainian shelling, although it is a moot point whether it is in Ukraine’s long-term interest to destroy the structure entirely, as to do so would severely limit its ability to maintain an offensive in the south if it were to recapture Kherson.
Even so, all the signs suggest that the balance of the war has tipped in Ukraine’s favour, to the extent that it is estimated Kyiv’s forces have recaptured more territory in the south than the Russians have managed to take in Donbas, in the east, the main focus of their recent offensive.
The indications that the Ukrainians, thanks to the belated arrival of Western weaponry, are now in a position to move on to the offensive, is certainly a vindication of the West’s efforts to ensure Kyiv has the weapons it needs to rebuff the Russian threat. As Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service told the Aspen Security Forum last week, the Ukrainians’ recent success means that “the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to find manpower and materiel over the next few weeks”.
Still, questions remain about just how committed the West really is to helping Ukraine achieve an outright victory in the conflict.
Despite the constant pledges from Western leaders to provide arms to
Ukraine, countries including Germany have hardly been proactive in making sure that Ukraine has the arsenal it needs to defeat the Russians. At one point, Germany closed its airspace to military supplies destined for Kyiv.
Washington, too, has been slow to supply vital equipment. The 12 Himar units so far delivered to the Ukrainians may have made a significant difference on the battlefield but they are nowhere near the numbers required to sustain a major Ukrainian offensive.
Which begs the question: does the West really want Ukraine to win this war? From the conflict’s outset there has been a welcome degree of unanimity among Nato leaders that Russia must not be allowed to achieve victory, and that every effort – from the imposition of sanctions to the arming of Ukraine – must be made to ensure that Moscow is not rewarded for its aggressive action.
However, that is a very different proposition from providing the Ukrainians with the support they need to actually win the conflict, which would require supplying much more weaponry than is currently on offer.
Which suggests that, while Western leaders claim they remain committed to ensuring that Russia does not win the conflict, they seem much less enthusiastic about helping Ukraine to achieve total victory.