With more than $110 billion in aid mired in political wrangling in Washington and Brussels, questions are increasingly being raised about how long Kiev will be able to hold off Russian forces and protect Ukrainian cities, power plants and ports from missile attacks .
Beyond the potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine, some European allies have begun to quietly consider the impact of the failure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. They are reassessing the risks an emboldened Russia would pose to alliance members in the east, said people familiar with the internal conversations, who requested anonymity to discuss matters that are not public.
The effect will be felt around the world, the people said, as US partners and allies question how credible Washington’s defense pledges will be. The impact of such a strategic setback would be far more profound than the spectacle of a failed US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, they said. And that’s without considering the prospect that Donald Trump could win next year’s presidential election and follow through on his public promises to pull out of major alliances, including NATO, and cut a deal with Putin on Ukraine.
The growing sense of anxiety also seeped into the leaders’ public statements. They have taken on an increasingly feverish tone as aid supporters admonish their opponents not to make vital aid hostage to domestic political priorities – something that rarely happened in previous debates.
“If Ukraine doesn’t get support from the EU and the US, then Putin will win,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said last week at a European Union summit where leaders failed to overcome growing opposition to next year’s aid package in amounting to 50 billion euros ($55 billion) and barely managed to approve the largely symbolic gesture of paving the way for Ukraine’s membership sometime in the future.
Last week, US President Joe Biden pledged to support Ukraine “as long as we can”, a rhetorical shift from previous pledges to do so “as long as necessary”. Hard-line Republicans in Congress have refused to approve $61 billion in aid for next year until Biden gives in to their demands for a tougher policy on the US southern border. So far, efforts to reach an agreement have failed. On Monday, the Pentagon warned that money for new weapons for Ukraine would run out on December 30 if lawmakers did not act.
In addition to growing public skepticism about the cost of supporting Ukraine, the disappointing results of Kiev’s counteroffensive this summer — its troops achieved only modest success against Russia’s heavily entrenched forces — have fueled questions about Ukraine’s publicly stated goal of recapturing everything occupied by Putin territories is realistic. Recently, allied officials have tended to highlight Kiev’s recent military successes, including successful strikes on the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, rather than the massive ground advances seen in the first year of the war.
“There is growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic about the lack of movement on aid to Ukraine and frustration at this stalemate with dire battlefield consequences,” said Christine Berzina, managing director of the German Marshall Fund in Washington. “The possibility of Ukraine losing additional territories and even its sovereignty – that is still on the agenda.”
European officials say Russia is likely to push to seize more territory and destroy more infrastructure if Ukraine does not get the weapons it needs to defend itself. Unable to defend itself, Ukraine could be forced to accept a ceasefire on Russia’s terms, they said.
Supporters of Ukraine in both the EU and the US say aid is likely to be approved in some form early next year. But it is unlikely to lead to a major breakthrough on the battlefield, officials said. Moreover, the outlook is becoming increasingly murky, although the stalemate on the ground makes it increasingly clear that the struggle could drag on for years.
In the Baltic states, officials are already telling the public to be ready for the next war because Putin’s forces will not be destroyed in Ukraine. The discussion shifted from “whether” Russia might attack to focusing on concrete preparations for this once unthinkable prospect. Despite Biden’s public assurances, questions are mounting about whether the U.S. and other allies would actually put their troops at risk to defend small states that were once part of the Soviet Union.
“Russia is not afraid of NATO,” Estonian military chief Martin Herem said in an interview with a local TV channel last week, estimating that the Russian military could be ready to attack NATO within a year after the conflict in Ukraine – which not a member of the alliance – ended. Other Western officials said it would likely take at least several years for Putin to recover from the massive losses his military has suffered in Ukraine, let alone threaten the much more capable NATO forces.
But earlier confidence that the invasion would be a “strategic defeat” for the Russian leader has faded, replaced in some quarters by a growing sense that Putin’s bet that he can prevail over the US and its allies may prove correct.
Finland, which joined NATO this year amid a growing threat from Russia, has boosted its own defenses and sought to strengthen its security ties with the United States. On Sunday, Putin warned that Russia plans to deploy more troops along its border, which is the longest between Russia and a NATO member. “There have been no problems,” he said. “There will be now.”
One Western official described how a Russian victory would trigger a wave of refugees heading to the EU, increasing pressure on services in those countries and exacerbating tensions between members. At the same time, the official said, the Ukrainian resistance would shift to guerrilla tactics, meaning fighting would continue in a lower gear, reinforcing instability on the EU’s eastern border.
Some European countries may seek to strengthen ties with Moscow or Beijing so they don’t have to rely too heavily on the unreliable United States, other officials said.
With Russian forces able to move much closer to the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, and Crimea giving the Kremlin a dominant position in the Black Sea, the US will need to make significant investments in its European forces to be a credible deterrent , the Institute for the Study of War said in a report released last week.
The US will need to deploy a “significant portion” of its ground forces, as well as a “large number” of stealth aircraft. Given U.S. production constraints, this could force the White House to choose between maintaining enough forces in Asia to protect Taiwan from a potential strike by China and deterring a Russian attack on NATO.
“The whole endeavor will cost a fortune,” analysts led by Frederick W. Kagan said in the report. “The spending will continue as long as the Russian threat continues — potentially indefinitely.”
More analyzes – on the website of Bloomberg TV Bulgaria
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2023-12-20 19:41:00
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