The fall of Luhansk
Vladimir Putin declared victory in Luhansk this week, after his troops took the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the province, in the east of Ukraine. Russia said the capture of Lysychansk had brought it closer to fulfilling its aim of taking the entire Donbas region, which is comprised of Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk. Putin stated that the units that had secured “victory” in Luhansk should now rest, to “increase their combat capabilities”. Kyiv said its troops had withdrawn from Lysychansk to avoid “fatal consequences”, citing Russia’s superiority in numbers and equipment.
At a Nato summit in Madrid last week, the US announced that it would send additional troops and weaponry to Europe, as part of the largest scaling-up of Nato defences since the Cold War. Nato allies backed the accession of Sweden and Finland to the bloc, and the UK pledged to find tens of billions of pounds more for defence, to take military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.
What the editorials said
Ukraine badly needs more help from the West, said The Times. Its forces have cut their losses in Lysychansk, deciding to preserve “manpower and firepower” for their ongoing efforts to defend their southern front and the rest of the Donbas. But Russia is still shelling the city of Slovyansk, in Donetsk, and Ukraine remains extremely vulnerable to its enemy’s superior firepower. Kyiv has shown that its forces have the capacity to “repel and reverse Russian advances” when well-equipped, but the support on which it relies is often slow to arrive, and insufficient when it does. If Ukraine is to prevail, that must change – and soon. Ukraine is by no means finished yet, said The Economist. “The Russian advance is slow and costly” and Kyiv has “vast numbers of motivated fighters”. It has recently used advanced Nato weapons to launch strikes on Russian ammunition dumps, and even “to drive Russian forces off Snake Island”, regaining a strategic prize in the Black Sea. With the West’s backing, Kyiv has the men, money and materiel to beat Putin. The question is, do Ukraine’s allies “have the will” to help it do that?
What the commentators said
Most summits bill themselves as “historic”, said Jonathan Eyal in The Observer, but last week’s Nato gathering can “credibly make such claims”. The alliance’s decision to increase its rapidly deployable troops to 300,000 is a huge step. “The determination of all of the alliance’s 30 member states to increase defence spending is unprecedented”, and will lead to some £172.6bn in extra expenditure. And members’ agreement on the accession of Sweden and Finland will greatly reinforce Nato’s northeastern flank. Yet the alliance still faces challenges, said Henry Olsen in The Washington Post – and “deeds will matter more than words”. Nato figures show that just ten of its 30 members currently meet the target set by the alliance of spending 2% of their GDP on defence. And while President Biden’s plan to ramp up the US military presence in Europe is welcome, it shows how much the continent continues to depend on Washington for its short-term security. If that is to change, European countries must step up.
Some are doing just that, said Richard Shirreff in the Daily Mail: Germany, for instance, has pledged to become “Europe’s biggest defence spender”, by increasing its defence budget to up to £69bn a year. Yet for all its talk of boosting its defence budget, Britain’s spending hikes are so small as to be almost meaningless once inflation is accounted for. That’s a situation it can ill afford, said Edward Lucas in The Times. The defence budget has had a black hole in it for years, leaving the military badly under-resourced. Imagine, for instance, a war between Britain and Russia. “A land warfare conference last week heard that at Russian rates of fire we would run out of artillery shells in just two days” – at which point only the US, or nuclear weapons, would “stand between us and defeat”. Despite recent claims to the contrary, the era of land warfare in Europe isn’t over – and it’s high time that Britain roused itself from its state of “shocking complacency” and gave its military the cash it so badly needs.
What next?
The US is to establish a permanent headquarters for its 5th Army Corps in Poland, send 5,000 extra troops to Romania, and increase rotational deployments in the Baltic states as part of its efforts to expand its European presence and stiffen Nato’s first line of defences against possible attack.
The UK has pledged to send an extra 1,000 troops to help defend Estonia, where 1,650 British soldiers are already deployed. Warplanes and a Royal Navy aircraft carrier are also to be placed on standby to head to the region, the Government said last week.