Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine War Updates, and how candid remarks by Ukraine's chief commander led to wrong, opportunistic conclusions by "statesmen" in Washington.
(side note: America’s deterrence is thus far holding Iran and Hizbullah from further expansion of the conflict in Gaza. We shall revisit this issue in more depth in the upcoming cables)
Ukraine War Updates.
1) Russia continues to suffer extensive losses on the Avdiivka assault.
Ukraine had thus far been able to repel this ill-conceived counteroffensive - inflicting major losses on Russia in the meantime.
In addition to 4-5k KIAs/wounded/missing in action, Russia’s cumulative losses in tanks and armored vehicles have now surpassed 400.
2) Washington tightens sanctions around Russia.
The US Treasury Department announced strengthened sanctions on 130 Russian evasion and military-industrial targets.
These targets are located in China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates -cracking down on Russia’s third-country operations to source materials for its military.
The sanctions aim to disrupt all aspects of Russia's military supply chain and to deter external entities from supporting Russia's war efforts.
3) The EU is in good shape ahead of winter - Russia’s energy blackmail is no longer possible.
The EU's gas storage capacity is nearing full utilization.
Energy companies are increasingly seeking storage solutions in Ukraine as they prepare for peak demand in winter.
EU's storage facilities are nearly 98% full, surpassing the target of 90% by November.
This higher storage level reduces the vulnerability of the EU to potential energy shocks during the winter months - at least one major allied bloc is safe from Russia’s energy blackmail going into winter.
Ukrainian Chief Commander’s candid remarks must not lead to wrong, opportunistic conclusions.
In his essay and interview for The Economist magazine, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny offered some sobering assessments around Ukraine’s prospects in the ongoing counteroffensive specifically, and in this war more generally.
These cables have long argued that it was imprudent to expect a quick success and high-tempo progress in the heavily defended battlefields of Donbas (littered with Russian mines).
And General Zaluzhny’s remarks echoed these sentiments - but not only.
Gen Zaluzhny went further, and admitted that there was essentially a stalemate on the battlefield - explaining that this is largely caused by a full battlefield visibility (for both sides) and a technological parity with Russians.
Here is Zaluzhny describing his recent visit to Avdiivka (where Russians are trying to gain ground with a counteroffensive of their own):
"On our monitor screens the day I was there we saw 140 Russian machines ablaze—destroyed within four hours of coming within firing range of our artillery…”
adding the following observation:
"The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other..”Yet with all those limitations, Ukraine had managed to inflict casualties of approximately 150k (according to Zaluzhny- largely corroborated by external reports/assessments) on Russia - a figure that would have debilitated any other country but Russia.
As General Zaluzhny says: “Let’s be honest, it’s [Russia] a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us…the most expensive thing we have is our people”.
Insincere and opportunistic conclusions.
Naturally, those who opposed funding for Ukraine no matter what the general would have said - the GOP fringe like Senators Josh Hawley and J.D.Vance (once upon a time, a reasonable fellow) pounced on these candid assessments to bolster their own long-held arguments that Washington should drop its help to Ukraine.
Senator Hawley used General Zaluzhny’s statements to oppose the ‘‘pro-Ukraine pitch”, saying that ‘‘we need to keep funding Ukraine, in all aspects, not just militarily, we need to provide money for their pensions and all the rest so that it can remain a stalemate. [emphasis added]”
These are of course exactly the wrong conclusions we should avoid - not arrive to.
Firstly, Hawley is brazenly insincere - there is literally nothing that General Zaluzhny could have said that would have changed Hawley’s made-up dogmatic mind.
Consider the following: what if Zaluzhny argued the very opposite?
What if he made a very convincing, fact-based argument that the victory and a breakthrough on the battlefield was near?
And let us also assume for a moment, let us imagine that in arguing for an imminent Ukrainian victory, Zaluzhny’s argument was watertight - now then, would that have changed Hawley’s mind?
Would it sway him? Would it convince Hawley to back Ukraine to bring about the ‘‘very near’’ endgame?
Of course not.. Hawley would have concocted a new excuse.
He would have argued that at such a sensitive time, when Russian defeat was so near, it is too risky to back Ukraine and risk a nuclear escalation from cornered Putin.
And this much is not too speculative either - this is precisely the kind of argument we kept hearing after the rapid fall of Kherson and Kharkiv and major success from the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the fall of 2022.
Secondly, Hawley’s objection to monetary/financial help in addition to military aid is rather absurd.
Of course we need to help Ukraine’s government to withstand challenges of basic wartime administration.
Does he think that a state with 44 million people can freeze all other basic state functions at the time of war?
The opposite is true - those very services are now even harder and costlier to execute.
Not only is there a massive indirect hit to Ukrainian economy, (with fleeing business capital) but Russia directly targets Ukraine’s key industries and its arable land with its firepower: major factories face barrage of missiles, and 1/3rd of its land previously fit for agriculture and farming in general, is no longer so (with 8.5% of its farmland unplowed) - it is littered with Russian artillery shells and mines.
Add to that, Russia consistently aims its firepower atUkrainian government institutions and core infrastructure.
The aim is to choke the Ukrainian state and deprive it of all possible sources of taxable revenue.
Given all this, it is only natural that at least some of the Western aid will have to go to prop up essential government services - this is such a basic point that it is shocking that one has to explain this to a US Senator.
Thirdly, Hawley claims that all this aid is wasted, since apparently, all it can do is to ensure that the war in Ukraine “can remain a stalemate”.
This from Hawley, is either: a) an extremely foolish assessment, or b) a deliberately misleading picture.
The aim is not the stalemate - it is victory, but stalemate is the unfortunate result given 1) the sheer objective difficulty of the obstacle, and 2) lack of adequate and timely help to achieve this victory.
And it says a lot that with all this help, Ukraine managed to reclaim a significant amount of territory, retook major cities like Kherson and Kharkiv, is placing a very strong pressure on Crimea, sinking Russian ships and submarines, and yet, is still stuck in the minefields of Donbas.
That Ukraine is not advancing nearly as fast as we would hope is quite clear - what is not clear however, is that it would simply remain in this position if we removed all our help.
Absolutely not - the current ‘‘stalemate’’ is not the normal state of affairs.
If aid is removed, Ukraine will simply collapse - the trajectory of war without western support is rather clear.
In other words, the fact that Ukraine is not winning at the ideal tempo doesn’t at all mean that if we were to remove our help, the situation would remain as a ‘‘stalemate’’ - far from it: Russia would eventually win.
The fact that Russia is struggling to invade Ukraine is not an accident - it has 3.5x the population and 11x the GDP (in purchasing power parity/international $ terms- which matters the most for the wartime assessment/for a more accurate comparison of a wartime industrial potential) and an army that has has highest number of tanks, precision-guided munitions, long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, sophisticated air defense systems like the S-400s, and a largest air force in Europe - with many advanced 4th and 5th-gen fighter jets in its arsenal.
The natural order of things is a successful Russian invasion.
Sure, the Feb 2022 ‘‘blitz’’ was badly planned and executed, but without Western help, Ukraine would almost certainly be defeated by now.
And without western help, this defeat is all but guaranteed going forward.
So no Senator Hawley, all this help is not for a ‘‘stalemate’’ - it is for an eventual victory, and saving that, prevention of a successful Russian invasion.
Recall what Putin said in his Valdai remarks just a few weeks ago - that without Western support, Ukraine had ‘‘a week to live”.
And he is not too wrong here: he was certainly exaggerating the timeline, but not the trajectory of events that would indeed unfold but for Western allied support for Ukraine.
And if that was to happen, if Russia was to succeed in invading the largest country in Europe, if the Western resolve and staying power (that to be clear, requires minimal sacrifices at 0.18% of US GDP with no soldiers on the ground) was proven to be utterly nonexistent and lacked the backbone, then who would ultimately benefit?
Would it not be China? Who now gets to demonstrate the world that its ‘‘no limits partner’’ can invade a significant chunk of Europe with impunity and all the West can do is to throw up its hands after ‘‘trying’’ for 2 years?
What would happen to American deterrence in the Pacific? How seriously would our allies take America’s word?
The same country that promised to ‘‘back Ukraine for as long as it takes” only to then reverse course and give up because there was not a breakthrough in Donbas at a tempo that would please the ‘‘Ukraine skeptics’’ - people who never wanted to support Ukraine from the get go?
Our allies and ‘‘swing states’’ would quickly hedge their bets - and rightly so: given the betrayal of Ukraine, it would be the correct national security policy for all of these countries to take.
Let us be crystal clear here: if Washington was to remove its aid and Ukraine was eventually invaded as a result of this decision, America’s credibility and reliability in the Pacific would be effectively nonexistent - no one will take America’s promises and ‘‘security guarantees’’ seriously: if America cannot even stand up to Russia (without putting any of its troops on the ground), how could it be possible expected to challenge China?
Allowing for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is a one-way ticket to ensuring America loses its global leadership definitively.
Consequently, no matter what precise reason one may have to doubt support for Ukraine, whether this is due to a desire to redirect resources to China or a matter of simple moral relativism, abandoning support is the worst policy to take if one cares for America to remain strong on the global stage.
No matter what views each Congressman and Senator may have on Ukraine, leaving Ukraine out in the cold would first and foremost hurt America and Americans: this would be one of the worst self-inflicted national security fiascos in America’s history.
At the time of China’s rapid economic and military rise, this policy of self-harm would cause immense damage to America’s prestige, influence, and capacity for deterrence.
Consequently, concluding that Ukraine should not receive further funds (with a baseless fantasy that somehow this would only keep things in place as a stalemate vs a total collapse) is the very wrong conclusion that we must avoid at all costs.
The right conclusion is this: double down on Ukrainian aid, pour even more resources at a faster speed to convince Putin that he is wrong in his strategic assessment and that the time is not on his side.
As stated by General Zaluzhny, (and written in these cables for a very long time now), a significant contributing factor for the current stalemate is the ‘‘drip drip’’ nature of American/Western military aid.
The weapons and platforms that could have offered Ukraine a major strategic advantage and an edge on the battlefield, were delivered very late - after months being wasted on hesitation and worries of ‘‘crossing Russia’s red lines”.
Consider that Ukraine is fighting a massive advanced military with no modern airpower - it is yet to receive its F-16s (and by then, their edge will already be limited - Russians have created a major S-400 air defense cover over Donbas - even reaching past Dnipro (central Ukraine)).
And those long-sought weapons that had been delivered, were supplied very late.
For example, America’s long-range ATACMS had finally arrived in October (these cables had been advocating for these missiles since the very beginning of this war) - in limited numbers too.
They arrived at the end of Ukraine’s counteroffensive as opposed to the beginning of the first assault in June.
(side note: Ukraine first used ATACMS to strike Crimea on October 30th)
And Germany is yet to supply its own Taurus version of long-range missiles - even though the UK, France and now the US have all already crossed another ‘‘red line’’ for Putin.
(side note: General Zaluzhny confirms that this slow delivery of crucial weapons was a major factor in preventing Ukraine from retaining a technological edge on the battlefield. But even then, he is not complaining: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have got, but I am simply stating the facts.” But he is wrong, we do owe Ukraine full support - if only to advance our own national security interests)
With all that said, going forward, General Zaluzhny calls for help in securing innovation in drones, electronic warfare, anti-artillery capabilities, and de-mining equipment, including new robotic solutions - tools that would help to restore technological dominance and allow for a possibility of a breakthrough.
It is important to heed to these calls and at least on this occasion, do so with the requisite decisiveness and speed.
One of Russia’s main strategic advantages in this war is the Western hesitation - whereas, Moscow’s Iranian and North Korean suppliers are not worried of going all in - they don’t worry about Washington’s ‘‘red lines’’.
Putin can see that the West is already too distracted with the Middle East, and that its political discourse is now switching to a totally wrongheaded ‘‘another never-ending proxy war’’ -type argument.
In his estimation, with Ukraine already stalling, he only needs to drag things out to late 2024 - when there would be a good chance of Trump returning to power in Washington
(side note: and this should not necessarily mean that the aid to Ukraine would end - after all, his first administration was far tougher on Russia than the outgoing Obama admin - which refused to provide even Javelins let alone do anything else. But Putin certainly believes that any other admin in power would be better than the Biden admin that had publicly committed itself to backing Ukraine for ‘‘as long as it takes”.)
Washington must rally to prove him wrong: support for Ukraine must be strong and consistent until either a) Ukraine takes back all of its territory lost after February 2022, or b) Russia is genuinely willing to negotiate a face-saving withdrawal from the territories that it currently occupies (and even then, fighting must continue in parallel to such negotiations).
Leaving aside Ukraine, and the global world-order, too much is at stake for America and Americans to go with any other policy but one of resolve and full support for Ukraine.