The Shifting Western Attitude to Ukraine and the Military Situation - June 12th Update
Both military developments on the ground, and domestic distractions are driving divisions within the West over objectives in Ukraine.
Overview
The narrative of Western unity has begun to fracture over the Ukraine since February. Divisions have arisen between Germany and France, which for different reasons(economic and domestic politics in the former, concern about the US/Britain leaving the EU in the lurch when it comes to reconstruction/resettling Ukrainian refugees in the case of the latter) see the continuation of the war as a threat to their interests, and the United States, Great Britain and Eastern European states.
Poland and the Baltic states have both emotional and security interests in a strong, independent, and anti-Russian Ukraine emerging from the conflict. Such a Ukraine would act as an effective buffer against Russia, much as it is doing today. This objective does not require specific territorial claims to be achieved(February 24th, the Crimea, something less) but it does require the vindication of the Pro-Western policy of Zelensky and the Ukrainian political class. That means that Ukraine needs to “win” militarily insofar as it justifies the belief that Ukraine can successfully pursue a military solution to its relations with Russia. This would in turn ensure that a post-war Ukraine would act as a strong military bulwark against Russia. On the other-hand, if Ukraine is forced to sue for terms, either because of overwhelming Russian force, a perceived lack of Western support, or some combination of both, then a Pro-Western policy will be discredited in whatever Ukraine emerges. Instead, the conclusion will be drawn that the West is unreliable, and only accommodation with Russia can assure national survival.
These concerns do not apply to either Germany or France, not least because Germany has no need for Ukraine as a military buffer against Russia, because Berlin can always rely on Poland to play the same role for Germany that Warsaw envisions for Kyiv. If anything, a vulnerable Poland directly adjacent to Russia would leave Warsaw more dependent on Germany, and less likely to cause “trouble” within the European Union. This is not to say that this is the Machiavellian motive behind Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy. He has shown few signs of possessing that sort of acumen. But it explains why Germany’s lacks the same strategic interest in not just Ukraine surviving, but in Ukraine’s pro-Western policy of resistance to Russia being vindicated. Germany never needed an armed, anti-Russian Ukraine, and Merkel made it abundantly clear that Germany saw its existence as a hindrance, not an asset. Germany did wish to vindicate Ukraine’s decision to align economically with the EU, and this is why Germany did assert itself against Yanukovych and to some degree with Minsk. But it was willing to accept Ukrainian political neutrality if Russia would accept Ukrainian economic integration. That remains the goal of German policy. Yet whereas even for France, neutrality implies a Ukraine able to defend itself against Russia, just not legally aligned with NATO, for Germany neutrality implies a nullity. Nonetheless, Scholz has had to deal with the unpopularity of his policy, and the way in which it has allowed his coalition partners, the Greens, to cannibalize support for his Social Democrats. That frustration has bled through in some highly counterproductive interviews.
French President Macron has come under fire for his continued phone-calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as for reports that when he called Ukrainian President Zelensky, he pressured him to consider on what terms Ukraine envisioned an end to the war. It is important here to separate French policy from German. Whereas Germany has slow walked or outright obstructed aid to Ukraine, France has provided extensive support. Macron’s denials that he is anything less than committed to the defense of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia’s invasion are therefore far more credible than those from Schulz. Where France diverges is likely a perception that neither the UK nor the US are particular invested in Europe or the Ukraine long-term.
Whereas it is easy for them to deliver weapons with which Ukraine can fight Russia, they are not the ones hosting more than a pittance of the more than five million Ukrainian refugees. Nor is there a strong reason to believe either is invested in the much greater financial burdens involved in rebuilding a post-war Ukraine. Reconstruction, without which France and the EU will be left footing the bill for millions of Ukrainian refugees indefinitely. The burdens, in terms of inflation and humanitarian aid, are vastly greater for Europe than for either the United States or UK, and the longer the war goes on, the higher the reconstruction costs will be. In neither the United States nor the UK have recent developments been reassuring.
The very public opposition of an increasing number of Republicans to further funding for Ukrainian military aid sends a clear message to Macron that it is unlikely there will be the political will to spend three to five times as much on non-military reconstruction. Nor, has the Biden Administration given much of an impression it is committed or interested in Europe. Biden’s team seemed determined to pivot to Asia in 2021, and even as the war rages, they have tried to pivot towards a new focus on Taiwan. Macon likely feels he is justified in communicating to Zelensky that he cannot take an extended commitment from Washington for granted.
If anything, Macron’s distrust of Britain’s commitment is exceeded only by his distrust of Boris Johnson’s motives. Not only does the specter of Brexit hang over UK/EU relations, but Boris Johnson has attempted to use the conflict to float a “European Commonwealth” seemingly designed to undermine the EU. Worse, he not only has tried to weaponize British support for Ukraine for his own domestic ends, witness his invocation of Zelensky during his recent leadership challenge, but has chosen the Ukraine conflict to pick a fight over the Northern Ireland Protocol. To Macron, this looks a lot like trying to hit Europe when it is weak, while trading on British support for Ukraine in contrast to those dastardly French and unreliable Germans to gain US support to tear up an international treaty.
Macron clearly does not trust the UK’s motives at all, nor America’s commitment, and may be genuine in urging Zelensky to keep that in mind.
It is worth noting that Macron does seem to be pushing the EU to grant Ukraine candidate status or at least not blocking it.
America
I am reluctant to condemn Macron, because there is increasing evidence Macron may have a point. US rhetoric does appear to be shifting.
Joe Biden recently suggested that Zelensky and Ukraine ignored American warnings of an impending invasion. This is an odd attack to make on an ally, especially when America has been trying to promote the impression of Ukrainian battlefield successes.
This follows what appears to be a concerted effort by the foreign policy old guard ranging from Henry Kissinger at Davos to the New York Times Editorial page to go beyond anything Macron has said or done in order to suggest not just that the US should define Ukrainian war aims at something short of “victory” but that it has no choice but to do so.
The New York Times editorial page over the last month has put itself forward as the voice of “responsible realism.” Careful to differentiate its questioning of what the desired “endgame” is in the Ukraine from heretical arguments from the likes of Mearsheimer, the Times has stressed its commitment to Ukraine’s cause in every published piece, before stressing that the paper is merely “asking questions.” On May 19th, the entire editorial board published an article entitled “The War in Ukraine is getting complicated, and America is not ready” in which the paper asked
“in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions.”
The following week, the Times followed up with an article reporting on the “controversy” encouraged by its own op-ed under the headline, “How does it end? Fissures emerge over what constitutes victory in Ukraine.” Most recently, on June 8th, the Times published an article under the headline, “US Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials say.” While the first article was a statement of the paper’s own stance, and the article a week later ostensibly covering public discourse, the most recent article directly cites US officials. That makes the article doubly interesting. Not merely in terms of the content, but that US officials wanted that content to be publicly available.
The article conveys three major points. One explicitly, and two implicitly. The explicit one is that Ukraine is not sharing enough intelligence, and this apparently makes it harder to provide US aid to Kyiv.
WASHINGTON — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.
But despite the flow of all this news to the public, American intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.
Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
The second, implicit point is that American officials suspect, or want the Times to report that they suspect, that the reason for this lack of transparency is that things are not going as well as Kyiv would like. In a nod to the Times’ own op-ed structure, this point is made first by denying it
Some European agencies say it will be difficult if not impossible for Ukraine to reclaim the land that Russia has taken since it invaded in February, but U.S. intelligence agencies are less pessimistic, officials said. Still, there are cracks in Ukraine’s defenses, and questions about the state of Ukraine’s military forces and strategy in the Donbas have created an incomplete picture for the United States.
And then diving headlong in to speculation
But there may be a potential cost if the intelligence community cannot present a fuller picture to the public or Congress about Ukraine’s military prospects, Ms. Sanner said. If Russia advances further, the failure to understand the state of the Ukrainian military could open the intelligence community to accusations that it failed to deliver a full picture of Ukraine’s prospects in the war to policymakers.
“Everything is about Russia’s goals and Russia’s prospects for meeting their goals,” Ms. Sanner said. “We do not talk about whether Ukraine might be able to defeat them. And to me, I feel that we are setting ourselves up for another intel failure by not talking about that publicly.”
It is worth recalling the way the NSC and Biden Administration wielded intelligence in January and February before the Russian invasion. They provided extensive briefings about concerns, even providing a date, February 16th, which may or may not have prompted Putin to delay. Deliberate leaking of “concerns” along with background briefings from intelligence officials has been at the heart of the American communication strategy throughout this conflict.
These leaks therefore cannot be written up merely as part of the New York Times’ agenda to shift the debate towards firm objectives short of total war. Rather, it is an effort by the Biden Administration to communicate something. That “something” may well be precisely what Ms. Sanner says, namely to prepare public opinion for a Ukrainian setback in the Donbas. But it may also be designed to push Ukraine in the direction of abandoning the current Donbas frontline. Buried in the middle of the piece is the following discussion.
The government’s more candid public statements may be a precursor to a conversation with its population about the strategic choices to be made in Donbas, analysts have said.
“Probably there’s a debate going on about whether to withdraw all the defenses that might be trapped if they stay,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international affairs at Columbia University. “If there’s going to be a deliberate withdrawal, Zelensky is going to have to explain that in some way that doesn’t seem to cast aspersions on Ukrainian arms. He’s going to have to tell some sort of story to the Ukrainian people if they do decide to pull those troops out, and explaining the losses they could suffer if they stayed is a logical way to do that.”
For all the discourse about whether Ukraine should be pressed to accept a settlement short of total victory, the return of Crimea, or even, in counterproductively delusional terms, calls for the breakup of Russia, there is little evidence that Ukraine is the side on the offensive. And clearly US officials have grown worried by an increasing gap between perceptions of the conflict, fueled by disengagement from the general public who assume “Ukraine is winning over those incompetent Russkies” and the reality which is likely to break into the news any moment now with a Ukrainian withdrawal.
The Military Situation
While Ukraine regained extensive territory around Kyiv in April, and Kharkiv in May(some of which Ukraine has withdrawn from), for much of the last month, the story has been one not of an attritional stalemate, but of an attritional struggle, hard-fought, with tactical successes on both sides, but which nonetheless has seen a steady stream of strongpoints fall to Russia. Popasna. Now Sieverodonetsk.
Furthermore, it is worth differentiating territory Ukraine recovered after Russian strategic withdrawals, such as that around Kyiv and Kharkiv, with territory along contested fronts in the East or Kherson. In the former, it is not fair to say as Russian propagandists do that the Russian advances were mere feints, or that Ukrainian resistance played no role in the Russian withdrawal. In both cases it did. Ukrainian resistance rendered further Russian advances along those axis impossible, while attacks on supply lines and the terrain rendered remaining in place impractical for Russian forces.
The Kharkiv offensive ran out of steam when the Ukrainian forces reached the point where they had to decide between attacking areas vital to the Russian war effort, namely the supply lines to the Izyum front, remaining where they were, or withdrawing to their prepared positions. They undertook the latter. The Kherson offensive has been heavy on reports of strikes on Russian positions, but it resembles more of a WWI advance than a strategic offensive to roll up Russian forces. This is to be expected given the time Russia has had to establish offensives.
More worrying, however is the situation in the East. Ukrainian forces seem to have largely lost control of Severeodonetsk after a brief counterattack. This, by itself, is not fatal. The city is far less defensible than Lysychansk behind it, which lies on high ground and from which artillery can render Severodonetsk a killing field. The bigger concerns are in the Ukrainian rear. Russian forces have not achieved any single major breakthrough from Popasna or Lyman or Izyum but they do not need to. They seem to have resorted to another WWI approach. Multiple attacks on a broad front with the expectation most will fail. These can be written off as feints. Whenever one succeeds, Ukraine will be forced to move forces from another location thereby allowing for another advance.
The reason this sort of attritional warfare is playing towards Russia’s advantage is not merely because of vast superiorities in artillery and ammunition. Those are part of it. Rather, it is because the nature of the front means that internal lines are actually playing against the Ukrainians rather than Russians. Russia is not the side redeploying units from one front to another as was the case in March and April. Their forces in Izyum are operating, and more importantly, supplied, independently of their forces in Lyman, Severodonetsk, or Popasna. This is one reason why expectations and predictions of “Deep Battle” envelopments are delusional. The Russians are pursuing something far more tactical. Their current approach gives them the luxury of determining the tempo of operations on any given front. If units need to rest or resupply, Russia attacks elsewhere with different units. By contrast, the Ukrainians must respond to whatever attacks the Russians launch, and if the Russians gain a major success, as they do on perhaps every fifth attempt, establish a new line in less advantageous positions. Each advance in turn reduces the supply routes open to Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine can realistically change this dynamic in one of two ways. Either by regaining the operational initiative by being able to seriously attack Russian forces themselves, or by pulling back to a shorter defensive line with fewer Russian axis of advance and where Russia would need to construct entirely new logistics networks. For all the press attention, Ukrainian efforts around Kharkiv have not amounted to the first option. Ukraine has retaken territory, but for this to work it needs to be able to threaten Russian units, not force them to withdraw. As long as they can withdraw, there is no need for Russia to reinforce them, which in turn means the offensives are useless in terms of forcing Russia to redeploy forces from the Donbas. Ukraine would need to hit Russian forces in a position from which they cannot retreat and threaten them with destruction. That would mean attacking not along the Kherson front, because Russia can give up plenty of villages, but at Kherson itself. It is unclear yet if that is even being attempted. The following map implies not, and Jomini of the West, who has a much more elaborate one is more blunt in his most recent update, posting “11/ Odesa-Kherson OD. The UAF counteroffensive into northern Kherson has met with little success so far. Despite the significant number of forces allocated to the operation, UAF units were only able to establish an 8km wide & 10km deep lodgment on the east of the Inhulets River.”
If Ukraine lacks the ability to do so, and there is perfectly good reason to believe they would need air superiority in order to safely conduct those operations against fortified Russian positions in urban areas, then the other alternative is to withdraw. Which would explain the Biden Administration’s increasingly panicked demands and leaks.
In short:
Ukraine needs to reduce pressure on the Donbas front. It has two choices
Regain the initiative by hitting the Russians somewhere else and forcing them to redeploy
Pull back
Ukraine very much wishes to avoid #2 and towards that end has been attempting #1. This has turned into a PR exercise less concerned with actually accomplishing the strategic task than with convincing Washington it is possible to do so, and therefore unnecessary to withdraw from Luhansk. If an offensive against Kherson could succeed in forcing the Russians into pulling out forces from their Luhansk offensive, then there is no need to abandon Severodonetsk or Lysychansk. All Ukraine needs are heavy weapons.
The problem(and the explanation for why Washington has seemed annoyed by the requests for “offensive weapons”) is that this is not a strategy but an excuse. #1 is a fake option insofar as it is unclear if any offensives on either the Kherson or Kharkiv fronts can possibly accomplish Ukraine’s strategic goals.
Russia, through hard experience has learned that the costs of redeploying units across hundreds of kilometers with all the wear and tear on equipment is not worth it. When faced with the choice between giving up territory or redeploying forces from other fronts, Russia has in the last six weeks chosen to abandon territory provided it is territory they can afford to concede. This has been the story in Kharkiv and now Kherson. Absent the ability to hit something the Russians cannot afford to concede(such as Kherson itself) and which cannot be defended by the Russian forces in the theater, Ukrainian counteroffensives on fronts outside the Donbas not only have not succeeded in reducing Russian pressure in the East, but cannot hope to do so.
My interpretation is that the White House is aware of this, and sees the Ukrainian decision to play up counterattacks first at Kharkiv and now at Kherson as an effort to pretend that option #1 is viable when it is not. They are determined not to feed that perception, hence the evasion about heavy weapons, because it would justify Kyiv delaying implementation of Option #2.
That is the context of the leaks, and the US agenda. The US wants Ukraine out of Luhansk, is increasingly worried about an actual collapse, and considers these offensives dangerous PR stunts with which its patience is exhausted.