If NATO By May 2023 Delivered “more than 98%” Of What Was Promised, Why Does Ukraine Continue To Maintain It Does Not Have What Is Needed For Spring Offensives? Can Kyiv Ever Be Satisfied?
If NATO By May 2023 Delivered “more than 98%” Of What Was Promised, Then Why Does Government Of Ukraine Continue To Maintain They Do Not Have What They Need For Offensives?
Always Seems To Be An Excuse…
President Zelensky Will Never Accept The Armed Forces Of Ukraine Have Enough From NATO Until NATO Forces Are In Ukraine Fighting Russians. Even With That, He Will Complain Not Enough NATO Forces Are In Ukraine.
The Government Of Ukraine Retains Plenty Of Time Accomplish Its Military Goals
No Substantial Offensive Or Defensive Progress By October 2023, President Zelensky And President Putin Should Plan For Negotiations- Regardless Of Whether Either One Wants To Meet.
(27 April 2023): “More than 98 percent of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine have already been delivered. That means over 1,550 armoured vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, including vast amounts of ammunition. In total we have trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian armoured brigades. This will put Ukraine in a strong position to continue to retake occupied territory.” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO General Secretary
(21 July 2023): “We did plan to start it in spring, but we didn't because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough properly trained brigades — I mean, properly trained in these weapons.” Volodymyr Zelensky, President Of Ukraine (2019- )
President Zelensky is challenged by the same statement uttered by Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense (1975-1977 and 2001-2006): “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” For President Zelensky, the question is an iteration of that statement: “Do I go to war with the army I have, not the army I might want or wish to have at a later time? Do I wait?”
The most critical benchmarks for evaluating success or failure of the offensives by the armed forces of Ukraine will be the response by the government of the Russian Federation, media in the Russian Federation, pundits in the Russian Federation, and citizens of the Russian Federation. If there is an acknowledgement of failure- significantly an acknowledgement that absent use of nuclear weapons- the territories lost in Ukraine are irretrievable, that would be consequential. NOTE: The government of the Russian Federation will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but will continue to include them in the conversation about the Russian Federation-Ukraine war, particularly that the armed forces of the Russian Federation are not fighting against the armed forces of Ukraine, they are fighting against the thirty-one country Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and specifically the nuclear-provisioned armed forces of the United States.
NATO members (31): United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia. The Kingdom of Sweden awaits approval from the governments of the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Turkiye.
The paramount issues for President Zelensky are 1) the patience of leadership of governments and the taxpayers who fund those governments and 2) an increasing number of citizens of Ukraine who do not want to serve on the battlefield.
These issues are like sand in an hourglass. President Zelensky cannot add more sand, cannot increase the size of the glass, and cannot continue turning it over and over seeking to restart the clock.
During the last several months, President Zelensky and members of his administration have commenced what for them is equal to digesting a stone.
They have begun to condition softly the citizens of Ukraine- those who remain within its borders and those who have departed (hopefully temporarily) and significantly, leadership of governments who are supporting Ukraine, that negotiations are likely, that territory (particularly the Crimean Peninsula) might be negotiable, that he may need to sit across from Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation (2000-2008 and 2012- ), at a table probably at the Presidential Complex in the capital of Turkiye, Ankara, for negotiations sponsored by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of Turkiye (2014- ). The conditioning includes statements by officials of the Zelensky Administration and individuals within the “Zelensky Orbit” where the statements are then contradicted, nuanced, or deftly explained. What continues with subtlety are consistent themes using various adjectives and adverbs.
For President Zelensky, imagining the scene in Ankara- which given his previous profession in television production he can easily create would be gut-wrenching for him. His preferred outcome would be a carefully staged death scene for President Putin.
The Washington Times (21 July 2023): Western hesitance to provide Ukraine with heavy weaponry and training provided Russia with “more time than they needed” to fortify their lines, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We did plan to start it in spring, but we didn't because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough properly trained brigades — I mean, properly trained in these weapons,” Zelensky said through an interpreter during a virtual appearance Friday before the Aspen Security Forum. “Because we started it a bit later on ... it provided Russia with time to mine all our lands and build several lines of defense.”
Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials maintained a collegial tone at the forum, just weeks after the Ukrainian president’s open dissatisfaction with NATO’s ambiguous promise to his country cast a cloud of acrimony over the Vilnius Summit. Yet a leitmotif of uncertainty about the lack of progress of the counteroffensive drew Zelensky to warn against an overeager demand for results.
“Yes, I do understand that it's always better to say victory comes sooner, this is what we also want, but the question is the price of this victory,” Zelensky said. "So, let us not throw people under tanks, literally. Let us plan our counteroffensive as our analysts and our intelligence suggests.”
U.S. and European officials have tried to strike an understanding note throughout their discussions of the Ukrainian efforts amid a miasma of trans-Atlantic anxiety that President Joe Biden and congressional leaders will falter in support of Ukraine as the 2024 election season unfolds. “Look, these are still relatively early days. We have said from the start, we’ve known from the start that this would be hard going,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier Friday. “The Russians have laid significant and serious defenses when it comes to mines initially. The Ukrainians are working their way through that. I believe they have what they need to be very successful.”
Much of equipment arrived far later than Ukrainian officials first hoped. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, declined to authorize the transfer of Leopard tanks until Biden promised to pledge U.S.-made Abrams tanks. That protracted conversation drew to a conclusion in January — weeks after France and the United Kingdom unveiled their respective decisions to provide light and heavy NATO-designed tanks and nearly a year after Zelensky began to “express a need for tanks” and other heavy arms in anticipation of this clash.
“If you watch what they're doing, they're doing this carefully. This isn't a thing that happened like with the Russians when they marched in Kyiv [and] bogged down ... really, truly bogged down,” Sen. James Risch (R-ID) told the forum. “They’re testing here, they’re testing there. They don’t have the manpower that Russia has to be able to throw it all at one place at one time.” Even that probing process has been hampered by delivery time frames. “They had a lot of mines on our fields, [and] because of that, [we’ve maintained] a slower pace of our counteroffensive actions,” he said. “I would like to draw your attention — this is not to complain but just to tell you — that we did lack enough of demining equipment. Now we are being held by our partners.”
Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and a senior member of the Intelligence Committee, argued that the United States has a moral and strategic obligation to aid Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum. That now-infamous 1994 agreement saw Ukraine relinquish the vast arsenal of nuclear weapons that it had inherited from the late Soviet Union in exchange for security assurances from the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. “I'm tired of hearing about escalation. ... I want Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he's going to do that's going to cause us to escalate instead of us wringing our hands and saying, ‘Oh, we can't do that,’” Risch said, referring to the widespread perception that Biden team’s support for Ukraine has been constrained by fear of Russian retaliation. “Look, everything I said they should have done at the beginning, they’ve done now. God bless him. I wish he had done it a year ago.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan rejected that line of criticism as one of “two caricatures” that distort Biden’s posture on aid for Ukraine. “We have been prepared to take risks, and we will continue to be prepared to take risks to provide support to Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “On the other hand, there's a caricature that says, ‘Don't worry at all. Don't even ask the question about what Russia might do.’ ... It is responsible for every member of NATO and for the United States to think about the Russian reaction when we choose to do something because that matters for our security matters for global stability. So, don't be paralyzed by it. Consider it and then make decisions accordingly. That is the clear and systematic way that we have approached the question of a security assistance to Ukraine.”
Sullivan also added that he thinks the Ukrainian approach retains a strong potential to yield a major breakthrough. “Ukraine has a substantial amount of combat power that it has not yet committed to the fight, and it is trying to choose its moment to commit that combat power to the fight when it will have the maximum impact on the battlefield,” Sullivan said. “And we are in close consultation with Ukrainians on the conditions for that. But ultimately, that's a decision they will make, and it is at that moment ... that we will really see what the likely results of this counteroffensive will be.”
Zelensky, who made a point to “thank all of our partners,” mentioning Biden by name, implied that this moment could be in the offing. “We are approaching a moment when relevant actions can gain pace,” he said, “because we are already going through some mines locations, and we are demining these areas.”
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