Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine war updates and Marco Rubio's damaging comments & missed opportunity to deter Putin.
1) Rubio on Ukraine - confirming Putin’s perceptions.
It was obvious that Rubio would discuss Ukraine at length in the Senate hearing on his nomination as the next Secretary of State.
And to ensure maximum leverage of the U.S. going into potential negotiations, Marco Rubio should have made it clear that 1) the U.S. would not let Russia walk all over Ukraine, and 2) that there was a possibility of Ukraine regaining an upper hand in this war (with U.S. help) if Putin pushed his luck.
Unfortunately, the next Secretary of State didn’t make any of these points.
In his comments Rubio did emphasize overall the necessity of concessions from both Russia and Ukraine to end the ongoing conflict.
But crucially (and erroneously) Rubio also asserted that neither side could achieve an outright victory:
“There is no way Russia takes all of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are too brave and fight too hard. It's also unrealistic that Ukraine will push Russians back to where they were on the eve of the invasion”
Rubio then added that the biggest problem facing Ukraine was that they were ‘‘running out of Ukrainians’’ to fight.
There are three problems with Rubio’s comments:
1) It is simply untrue that neither Russia nor Ukraine can attain their maximalist objectives.
Russia can indeed achieve a full victory and Ukraine can indeed push back to pre- Feb 2022 invasion.
As it stands, Russia enjoys the upper hand, in spite of 700k+ casualties sustained by December 2024, and in spite of ever-increasing difficulty of recruiting more men without ever-increasing fiscally costly incentives and resorting to mobilization, Russia still enjoys the advantage in materiel, overall resources, and firepower (whether that is artillery shells, missiles or even cheap FPV drones).
Without significant external help, Ukraine simply cannot match Russia’s resource-heavy advantage.
And as such, we see a constant Russian advance (no matter the exorbitant costs) on the battlefield.
And yes, many analysts have shared undoubtedly amusing infographics showing that at this pace, Russia would invade the rest of Ukraine in few hundred years.
But such an analysis ignores a crucial reality: at a certain critical mass, and after a certain level of accumulating losses, one party can suddenly achieve a breakthrough and the other’s defenses could rapidly collapse.
We don’t know yet what this breaking point looks like for Ukraine.
But to assume that Russia’s future advances will continue at a similarly slow pace is misguided.
To see how losses can accumulate into a rapid breakthrough, one only needs to look at the fall of the Syrian regime: where the capture of initial few towns led to an unstoppable momentum and a total collapse of Assad’s army.
For years, Assad’s army was able to fight grinding battles and tolerate extreme attrition - but in this case, losses accumulated pretty rapidly and created a new reality of a completely demoralized army that eventually found itself in a rout.
But we don’t even need to look at other conflicts: in the Ukraine war itself, the September 2022 counteroffensive led to a sudden collapse of Russian defenses in Kharkiv and Kherson - a number of towns and a huge territory of 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) were recovered in mere days.
(side note: this is more than 1,737 square miles of Ukrainian land that Russia captured in the entirety of 2024)
Similarly, if Russia continues to capture cities in Donbas, at some point it will reach a critical mass of momentum and Ukraine’s defenses would face an unbearable strain.
Underestimating the importance of rapid breakthroughs is one of the most common errors in the analysis of the Ukraine war.
It is also one of the reasons why Ukraine is being underestimated as well.
It is now presented as undeniable truth that Ukraine cannot possibly recover its lost territories.
The issue of Crimea is separate, but there is no question that Ukraine can indeed recover its lands lost after February 2022 - as discussed above, Ukraine has demonstrated this very ability in the fall of 2022, and more recently, in its incursion into Kursk (and the most recent counteroffensive) it has demonstrated ability to engage in complex combined arms maneuvers needed to recapture its territories.
If Ukraine had decisive backing in funds and weaponry, there is no reason to assume that it would be incapable of taking back all of the territories that it had lost after February 2022.
2) Refusing to commit to Ukraine’s survival was a grave mistake.
Back in 2024, a lot of criticism was lobbed at Macron for his suggestion that France could send troops to Ukraine.
The statements were attacked as reckless and escalatory.
Certainly, there was enough subject-matter to criticize there - starting with the credibility issue (given that France’s real-life contribution to Ukraine’s defense often fell far short of the aspirational rhetoric of its leader.)
But critics often ignored the crucial context, and therefore the point of these comments: they were made when Ukraine was on its back foot and there were significant concerns that the entire front could collapse.
(side note: that was also when the new and eventual $60bn U.S. aid for Ukraine was facing extreme delays - failing to pass in Congress.)
As such, the point of Macron’s statements were to guarantee the floor: to signal to Putin that Europe wasn’t going to passively watch as Russia marched on to conquer the rest of Ukraine.
It was an important signal to disabuse Putin of the notion that his maximalist objectives could in fact include capture of the entire country.
Rubio did not make any comment to this effect.
And if he wanted to avoid explicit guarantees to bind Trump, he could at least make implicit threats of the following variation: “Mr Putin must realize that he cannot march on to take the rest of Ukraine - he needs to come down back to reality and readjust his goals.”
He didn’t even do that.
Instead, he explained the improbability of this outcome by praising the bravery of Ukrainian defenders.
They are indeed extremely brave, but Putin thinks he can get away with endless march onwards, and his team didn’t see any significant signals that a third party - the number one superpower in the world - wouldn’t let that happen.
3) Suggesting that Ukraine faced an insurmountable problem.
By saying that Ukraine was running out of Ukrainians to defend itself, Rubio is in effect implying the existence of an insurmountable problem.
For if it is resources or weapons that Ukraine lacks, that can be fixed, but if it is Ukrainians that they lack - then who is going to fight for them?
Clearly not the U.S. or any other NATO state.
(side note: this is true at least as of today - it is another matter entirely if Russia did indeed achieve a major breakthrough and was on track towards a major onslaught. In such a scenario, it is unclear if the West would indeed wait passively to accept new maps in Europe, and let imperialist Russia stand right at NATO’s doorsteps by Poland.)
And if Putin can see that a U.S. Secretary of State thinks Ukraine has an insurmountable problem, then exactly why shouldn’t he proceed with his invasion and push for maximum gains?
After all, if that is true (and Putin does think that too - given all his previous statements) then marginal benefit of each conquered small town and each additional Ukrainian soldier killed in battle will compound to make it likelier that Russia reaches the critical mass/tipping point/breakthrough sooner than later.
And once again, since he didn’t hear any active disincentives from Rubio, why shouldn’t he pursue precisely that strategy?
Of course, the previously discussed Kellogg plan and the desire to arrive at a ‘‘solution’’ within the next 100 days comes with an apparent warning that the U.S. would arm Ukraine with even more intensity if Russia failed to agree to a sustainable ceasefire/armistice deal.
But this is hypothetical and time is of the essence.
Putin can endlessly delay “negotiations” for the first few months of the year - with his army coming closer to a tipping point/breakthrough moment with each passing day.
And so as of today, Putin doesn’t have a decisive answer to the question “why not go all out towards Kyiv?”
And unfortunately, Rubio wasted an opportunity to provide a persuasive answer to this question.
2) UK-Ukraine Partnership continues to blossom.
In the meantime, continental NATO allies are deepening their cooperation and partnership with Ukraine.
The UK and Ukraine have signed a "100-year partnership" agreement focusing on defense cooperation and technological projects, including drone development to bolster Ukraine's post-war security and economic recovery.
3) Ukraine’s unmanned warfare innovations enter a new stage.
The Khartiia Brigade of Ukraine has pioneered the use of remote-controlled, unmanned ground vehicles equipped with machine guns in assaults against Russian positions in the Kharkiv region, minimizing direct soldier involvement in high-risk operations.
By now, all of us have been accustomed to FPV drones and precision strikes conducted via remote control.
But this is another level of unmanned warfare on the ground.
It is reasonable to expect both sides using an increasing number of ground robots and unmanned ground vehicles fighting over control for the trenches sometime very soon.