Take off the handcuffs
The rockets that killed dozens of civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol last weekend also blew up the futile Western strategy for stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine.
President Barack Obama and his European allies desperately hoped that sanctions would squeeze Vladimir Putin into accepting a negotiated solution to the conflict. They were dreaming that he would press Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine to abide by the so-called Minsk cease-fire agreement signed in September by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and Europe.
Instead, Putin’s proxies, who fired the rockets into Mariupol, have ignored the Minsk accord and are on the warpath to seize more Ukrainian territory. They are doing this, as Obama said, with “Russian backing, Russian equipment, Russian financing, Russian training and Russian troops.” The time for pushback is now. It’s past time to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons to prevent further Russian aggression. In December, Congress passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which authorized the president to provide such weapons. The White House, and European nations, have been reluctant to consider lethal aid lest Putin escalate further or derail efforts to implement the Minsk cease-fire.
But withholding defensive weapons has not kept Moscow from sending hundreds of artillery pieces, tanks, armored personnel carriers and missiles to Ukraine. “We’ve had a policy of not providing arms to Ukraine and we’ve seen Putin escalate a half-dozen times,” says former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst. Contrary to the arguments against defensive weapons, he says, “The absence of Western support has led to escalation.”
In other words, not bolstering Ukraine’s defenses encourages Putin to seek the seizure of more Ukrainian land.
Obama still appears reluctant to send such equipment. But the Ukraine violence won’t stop until Putin is convinced it’s too costly to ignore diplomacy in favor of war.
“Putin has a serious liability in conducting this war,” says Herbst, because he has lied to his people about the direct involvement of Russian soldiers in the fighting—and about the casualties they have taken. Polls show Russians don’t want their sons fighting in Ukraine (they believe Putin’s claims that the war is being waged only by Russian-speaking Ukrainians). The burials of the increasing numbers of Russian soldiers killed in the fighting are kept secret.
When associations of soldiers’ mothers have tried to publicize the deaths they have been told they must register as foreign agents. Russian journalists who try to report on the casualties have been beaten.
If the weak Ukrainian army were strengthened—soon—the cost of Russian aggression would be heightened. It would be impossible for Putin to hide the truth about the human toll of the war, and his popularity could slide.