Vovcha Line Breached; Salvaging Biden's Legacy In Ukraine
The USA's lame duck president can still cement a legacy not defined by losing Kabul and engineering a bloody stalemate in Ukraine. A country still fighting for its life needs a lot more weapons, fast.
Introduction
While a local ruscist breakthrough in the Toretsk-Pokrovsk sector was getting a lot worse this past week, another set of angry red lines on a completely different map offered a personal reminder of the helplessness Ukrainians in frontline communities have had to live with for years now. The Park Fire decided to burn a literal straight line from its ignition point to the area where I grew up.
A wildfire and an orc offensive have a lot in common. They move quickest along the most favorable terrain contours, pace of spread determined by weather and resources available to firefighters. As in a wildfire, the correct response is usually to avoid throwing assets in the path of the steamroller until its forward progress begins to slow.
And that’s what happened over the weekend in the Park Fire, thousand of firefighters and hundreds of bulldozers cutting fire breaks in the rocky soil while helicopters and aircraft bomb hot spots with fire retardant. Fingers crossed they continue to have success, not that the weather is planning to help this week. The irony is that here in Oregon, where my wife and I settled half a lifetime ago, today it decided to rain.
The weather gods delight in mockery. But at least the lines are holding down in southern Cascadia, as the land defined by the volcanic range running from northern California to southern British Columbia is properly called.
Wildfires have always been part of life in this region. Climate change may make them worse in the future, but California’s climate has always switched between wet and dry phases, the latter defined by regular grass fires. Europeans settled California during one of the wettest periods in its recent history, the Central Valley mostly marshy wetlands home to millions of migratory birds. In dry phases, however, this region largely reverts to a shrubby grassland much like southern Ukraine unless intensively irrigated.
The forests around California’s Central Valley similarly flip between dense stands of conifers and a more open configuration. Europeans held the mistaken belief that forests were meant to persist untouched indefinitely unless badly disturbed. They also didn’t much like wetlands, draining most to form one of the world’s breadbaskets, along with Ukraine.
By interrupting the fire cycle in the forests and foothills, apocalyptic blazes have become possible. An astounding fraction of California has burned over in ways it will take decades to recover from instead of years.
When you combine poor understanding of local climate conditions over the long haul, huge agricultural and forestry concerns that manage their lands for maximum sustained yield instead of hazard reduction, and environmental policy driven by the emotions of urban donors who treat nature as their personal park, disaster is inevitable. Three years ago a fire burned just east of this one, from Paradise almost to Susanville, both visible below:
A warming climate will absolutely make California’s dry cycles more frequent and longer lasting. But though it has become fashionable to attribute events to climate change, this habit is deeply harmful. All it can accomplish is breed fatalism. You don’t need climate change to explain every calamity caused by human ignorance and neglect. The Ukraine War does have a climate angle: there’s a reason Putin wants such productive farmland, or at least to prevent Europe from having it. But attempted genocide is a bigger deal.
While the comparison to Putin’s assault on Ukraine is obviously very poor in terms of the human cost, the similarity to watching a fire perimeter expand is pretty striking in a purely scientific sense. As I’ll cover below, the ruscist occupation of Prohres that I mentioned in last week’s update evolved into something much worse, yet along fairly predictable lines.
To the key takeaways from the fourth week of July:
Moscow’s troops are across the Vovcha on the Toretsk front, threatening to outflank a key Ukrainian defense line on the road to Pokrovsk.
Elsewhere ruscist forces remain mostly stalled, attacking across multiple fronts without any operational coherence aside from keeping Ukraine busy.
Uncertainty prevails about when F-16s will arrive, in what strength, and where they might be based. This is probably a good thing.
Ukraine’s bombardment campaign scores again, hitting at least one bomber on the ground as far away as Murmansk. Refineries keep taking hits as well.
The Harris-Trump race is deadlocked, her ascension merely restoring Democrats’ hopes of not getting wiped out. And a close election probably leads to chaos.
Biden’s legacy depends on properly supporting Ukraine. To mount effective local or operational counterattacks, Ukraine needs a lot more armored vehicles.
Weekly Overview
Most sectors of the front this past week have been relatively stable, though Moscow continues to throw punches all over the place. Putin’s summer campaign has mostly been another epic fail, with Muscovite strategy devolving into a simplistic effort to exhaust Ukraine with ceaseless tactical pressure.
Historically, this approach usually goes poorly in a strategic sense. Moscow has more resources than Ukraine alone, but is put to shame by the collective capabilities of the world’s democracies once fully active.
For all its posturing, Moscow remains a military and economic midget. Without a nuclear arsenal Putin’s empire would be a total laughingstock; high oil prices sustain its economy. If you ignore all of Putin’s nuclear threats, as one now must, the limits to Moscow’s power are apparent.
Sending a couple warships to Cuba or to join Chinese-led exercises off Alaska is hardly a sign of a power to fear. Putin can put whatever missiles he likes in whatever range he pleases from the USA, it still doesn’t change the fact that if he crosses certain lines, he dies.
Putin’s hand is infinitely weaker than it looks. If the U.S. Navy was ordered to sink all his rusting battle boats tomorrow, what is he going to do, trigger Armageddon? Did Saddam Hussein use his chemical arsenal against Coalition forces in 1991? No, he ate the loss and turned to containing civil unrest, because the USA wasn’t coming to kill him and he knew it. Even when the US did actually come for him, what did he do? Hide in a spider hole then offer to negotiate with the soldiers who found him.
Who believes that Vladimir Putin would behave differently, when put to the test?
Moscow is too weak to beat Ukraine backed by only partial allied support. All the ruscist empire can hope to do in any all-out World War Three scenario is launch all its nukes, then die. So it’ll only do that if there’s zero chance of survival, because hope springs eternal in the human mind. If Putin weren’t secretly an optimist, he wouldn’t have chosen this inane war. Unless NATO soldiers are marching on the Kremlin, any nuclear use will be limited and demonstrative. There’s not going to be a nuclear holocaust over Ukraine.
In the field, Moscow is throwing away troops faster than it can train them again. The average tank spotted coming from refurbishing plants inside Putin’s empire is now a T-54/55 or T-62. A year ago these were a rare sight, mocked even though it was plausible they would be effective as static defensive fortifications, but they’re showing up in assaults. It is starting to look like the old Soviet stocks are down to such badly maintained kit that ruscist industry can no longer meet the demand for replacement vehicles at the front.
The thing about old equipment is that sprocket model M-1960 (I’m making this up) might have been manufactured in the millions fifty years ago and used in every tank for decades, but be past its own working life and no longer possible to produce. A hundred distinct bottlenecks can appear in an attempt to refurbish old gear that require clever adaptation. But eventually the machine tools you need to cut newer M-1990 sprockets to the proper size wear out. You also have to train workers in niche jobs when under pressure to send bodies to the front.
Moscow is more or less doing its utmost to exhaust Ukraine so that it can’t launch any major counteroffensives this year, and that’s it. Putin’s hope is that American partisan dysfunction will remove the USA from an active leadership role and Europe will fall apart. The former is a much more reasonable bet than the latter, at this point, and if his apparent plan is only half implemented it will fail. Ukraine can survive on European aid alone, if not win any time soon.
That being said, I have begun to suspect that at least some orc command structures in Ukraine are becoming more competent. A pattern of tactical breakthroughs during brigade rotations on the Pokrovsk front is emerging, repeatedly putting Ukrainian defenders west of Avdiivka in an uncomfortable position. It serves as a stark contrast to the quality of ruscist offensive efforts elsewhere.
The northern wing of the Kharkiv front, near Vovchansk and Lyptsi, remains strongly contested. However, despite heavy fighting, there has been little to no obvious progress made by either side.
Both sides are supposedly pushing troops to the area, Moscow in hopes of gaining momentum and Ukraine aiming to push the orcs back across the border. A group of ruscist troops remains holed up in an industrial plant in a siege that appears likely to end in their being starved into submission.
On the southern side of the Kharkiv front, ruscist forces have consolidated control of the village of Pishchane but made little additional progress towards the railroad crossing over the Oskil south of Kupiansk they’re apparently targeting. They are also moving through a valley that Ukrainian troops can attack from high ground on two sides, so this attack vector looks unpromising for Moscow.
Moscow continues to apply pressure on the Siversk bulge, particularly the Rozdolivka area. The Ukrainian brigades here have a lot of territory to cover so it isn’t surprising that they’re pulling back from exposed positions when facing poor odds.
To their south Chasiv Yar has seen more heavy fighting but little ground has changed hands; Muscovite troops appear to have tried to assault the northern wing of Ukraine’s defense here where a canal passes underground for a stretch. So far Ukrainian counterattacks have held the line and inflicted substantial damage, so we’ll see in a week where matters stand.
Similarly, the unexpected ruscist frontal assault on the Toretsk area has continued to fight fiercely without gaining substantial ground. Moscow is trying to secure Zalizne and Niu-York in an apparent effort to assault Toretsk directly, or at the very least set the stage to outflank the defenders to the west.
Though this operation came as a surprise, that doesn’t make it a good idea. Toretsk is on a ridge of higher ground in the first place; scattered mining tailing heaps offer excellent spotting points. Ukraine has had enough time to reinforce the area, and began the assault without clearing the flanks of the Toretsk area first.
On the southern side of the Toretsk front is where Moscow has scored its biggest win since taking Ocheretyne in the same area. I’ll cover it more fully in the next section, but it’s worth pointing out that instead of closing a jaw around Toretsk from the west it is maintaining what looks like a straight-up charge at Pokrovsk.
I have been expecting the group of forces fighting here to turn north - perhaps that was too obvious, but it is beginning to look as if Moscow has abandoned sound military practice and simply decided to attack wherever it stands a chance of gaining ground. This would fit with a broader strategy of pure attrition.
Speaking of, despite Moscow’s periodic raids on Ukrainian infrastructure and air bases, it’s been Ukraine that has been delivering the most notable hits. At least one strategic bomber was damaged up in Murmansk, almost 2,000km from Ukraine. As at least one Ukrainian commentator I read this week noted, that means Ukraine can field its own homemade equivalent to the USA’s famous Tomahawk cruise missile.
Now, the comparison is imperfect, but decades of Soviet efforts to build an air defense network capable of knocking down stealthy, low-flying cruise missiles moving as fast as a jet are being undone by converted light aircraft that move only a bit faster than a car on flat ground. Spending a million-dollar air defense missile to knock down a drone costing a fraction of that is not an exchange you really want to be in - ask the U.S. Navy veterans of the Houthi campaign. They did their jobs well, but having drones to kill drones would be nice.
Ukraine’s attacks remain pinprick strikes, but Moscow’s inventory of quality assets is smaller than its stock of old Soviet vehicles. Putin is very careful with his air force for a reason. Truth be told, it’s a matter of time before orc jets start experiencing routine engine failures on operations. Aircraft wear out pretty fast if you use them intensively, especially if they have to pull hard gees to evade Patriot missiles. Add in a few successful drone hits, and you’ve got the makings of a long-term suppression campaign that will draw in more and more ruscist assets to protect airfields, refineries, and factories. If they get hard to hit, electrical substations, rail yards, and bridges are all potential targets.
Even if they can’t be destroyed outright, repairs take time and cause delays. Ukraine needs to generate a metabolic crisis that bites throughout the orc war machine. So it’s got to hit every node in the supply chain that it can reach. The pain only gets worse the longer the war continues.
In the air, eyes continue to look towards the skies of Ukraine for evidence of the first F-16 operations. A lot of effort is going into downplaying the impact F-16s can have in the US press, but whether this is a sign of the US creating artificial barriers to expanding pilot training or just an effort to manage public expectations remains unclear. Most analysis of Ukraine these days either acts like no real change is possible in the war’s trajectory and a ceasefire in place is inevitable or that a few dozen F-16s and ATACMS strikes on ruscist airfields will automatically win the war.
Binary options are rarely real: people create binaries to make their lives easier. The answer is usually in the middle.
Vovcha Line Breached
One of the more unambiguous ruscist wins of late was another breakthrough apparently caused by the orcs timing a major attack with a Ukrainian brigade rotation. Multiple Ukrainian sources have suggested that Moscow is now tracking Ukrainian brigades that have a reputation for performing poorly or having issues in the field and attempting to target them specifically.
If true, this ironically adds support for one of the key aspects of my Scout’s Way of War piece that I hope to finish up this week. Ukraine must create weak points it can exploit at the operational scale by relentlessly targeting orc units as they are shuffled between fronts to recuperate after suffering in ops elsewhere. They must have no sanctuary in Ukraine.
First things first - what actually happened. Last week I noted that the sudden ruscist occupation of the tiny hamlet of Prohres was concerning, and my worry turned out to be absolutely justified. Over the past week Moscow has managed to push a full 5km towards Pokrovsk, totally upsetting the natural scheme of defense that Ukraine appears to have had planned.
The Vovcha river that runs into the Dnipro - as opposed to the Vovcha in Kharkiv district that flows into the Donets - makes for a natural line of defense for about 30km all the way down to the Kurakhove reservoir. Ukraine might have been able to cover it with just a handful of brigades, mostly lighter ones.
This Vovcha originates next to Prohres, which sits on a ridge overlooking the stream. A major rail line connecting Avdiivka to Pokrovsk runs through the area, and north of it another water barrier extends almost to Kostiantynivka.
It isn’t a catastrophic situation, but deeply concerning for three major reasons. First, it is entirely conceivable that Moscow is able to leverage social media posts to build a portrait of each Ukrainian brigade. There’s just no way to guarantee that personnel won’t collectively share details that an AI can use to grade brigade morale. Junk data may help.
Allegedly, an incoming brigade was caught right after rotating into the Prohres sector, possibly replacing 47th Mechanized. A number of forward positions were nearly surrounded and withdrawal barely secured in time. That appears to have led to a breach that the orcs rushed into. By the weekend they seem to have shifted to securing the flanks to avoid being thrown back, but once they manage to entrench it’s very tough to shift them.
This is basically the same story that played out in Avdiivka, Ocheretyne, and Niu-York. If Moscow is tracking and targeting specific brigades, that’s one of the smarter moves it’s made in the entire war.
A second serious issue raised by the Prohres breach is the fact that Ukrainian forces on multiple occasions now have been unable to mount an effective counterattack against a spearhead that should be extremely vulnerable. While I’m against counterattacks to retake positions for the sake of not losing ground, when the enemy throws themselves into a pocket you want to be ready to take advantage of how hard it is to support troops in forward positions nowadays.
A lack of modern armored vehicles is the root cause. 47th Mechanized is the only brigade using Abrams tanks and the primary, though now not the only, user of Bradley IFVs. If it was finally rotated to the rear for rest, Moscow probably spotted the movement early on. I’ve definitely noticed less georeferenced footage from the 47th lately. Give Ukraine a few hundred more Abrams and Bradleys and this will be less of an issue.
Insufficient air defenses are another important factor. To support these pushes Moscow has to deliver a lot of glide bombs in a short period of time. This has got to be stopped with an integrated air defense system.
A third concern the ruscist breakthrough raises: Ukrainian forces that could have focused on preventing the orcs from coming across the Vovcha now have to contend with a threat on their northern flank. Containing this new breach will require that Ukraine keep as many brigades in this sector as it has to this point.
25th Airborne and 68th Jager, which have been fighting a tough rearguard action across the Vovcha south of Novoselivka Persha, almost certainly have to withdraw across the Vovcha. The ridge narrows at the town of Zhelanne, creating a neck that an experienced Ukrainian brigade with some modern armored vehicles like the 25th should be able to hold. The 68th, in hard fighting for a while, can cover the Vovcha line around Komyshivka.
Another Ukrainian brigade will need to cover Hrodivka, leaving another on the slopes north of the Kazennyi Torets to protect the flank of the 110th in Vozdvyzhenka and ensure that any orcs trying to press further west will have to move down a slope open to attack from high ground on two flanks. A pocket formed by 25th, 31st, and 151st brigades in this conception would be vulnerable to drone attack from three directions.
The nice thing about ruscist forces committing to moving towards Pokrovsk is that the odds of an assault on the western flank of Niu-York is unlikely. Moscow’s command in this area reportedly lacks the troops and supply infrastructure to support three separate operations.
In an ideal world, Ukraine would be able to assemble an assault force that drives south along the extended orc flank and threatens to liberate Avdiivka. But this is almost certainly beyond Ukraine’s present capabilities. Further, in truth the closer the fighting gets to Pokrovsk the easier it will be for Ukraine to inflict more casualties.
The terrain south and east of Pokrovsk isn’t easy to traverse, and if Moscow’s main ambition is to cut the highway linking Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka the toughest part looks set to be the last. Every kilometer Moscow’s troops move from an urban center the longer their supply lines become and the more trucks they lose to drones.
In a way, Moscow is fighting about as I’d hope it would, if I’m in Syrskyi’s shoes. Frittering away increasingly precious combat power on disconnected, poorly coordinated efforts is the path to defeat walked by many an empire.
However, to take full advantage of Putin’s inept strategy demands that Ukraine have allies that understand how desperately Ukraine needs comprehensive support without limits. It is almost August, and so far the hundreds of armored vehicles needed to outfit Ukraine’s newly mobilized soldiers have not materialized.
The question is now whether Joe Biden will use his final months in office to finally do what is necessary to ensure that Ukraine can win this terrible war no matter what happens in the upcoming election. His legacy depends on it, if defending an ally under attack isn’t motivation enough.
Geopolitical Brief: The Potential Of A Lame Duck Joe Biden
Global affairs continue to deteriorate slowly but surely as the present generation of inept world leaders make all the classic mistakes. China is actively bullying smaller countries over petty competing claims in the South China Sea, the tensions eagerly egged on by a US foreign policy establishment that sees a forever enemy abroad as the only hope for duct taping Red and Blue America together.
The Middle East continues to be a hell-disaster, with Israel and Hezbollah looking ever more certain to wind up in an all-out war eventually. Probably the only reason one hasn’t happened yet is that Hezbollah fears losing power in the ruins of a postwar Lebanon and the US is desperately trying to restore the status quo in effect up until Yom Kippur, 2023, and so holds Israel back. Both Israel and Hezbollah prefer the other to take the blame for starting any bigger fight, so maybe this won’t get out of control.
But a group of Druze kids in Golan being killed, probably by a Hezbollah rocket that missed its intended target, is the exact sort of spark that Middle East observers have been fearing since Israel and Hezbollah started exchanging fire last year. With Netanyahu’s fate bound to Israel remaining at war until its people feel safe again - which the Israeli government and media will never allow - it’s hard to see how a wider conflict will be avoided. Whether Iran winds up drawn in is an open question. Middle East wars tend to escalate methodically, with posturing substituting for kinetic action to a degree, so hopefully the damage can be relatively contained. Maybe Israel will realize that flattening Beirut is sure to backfire and apply sensible limits to its AI targeting algorithms.
Still the biggest international politics topic this fiery July remains the dismal American partisan civil war. That quickly reverted to form this week, Harris and Trump both characterizing the election in existential terms, dashing what little hope there ever was of anyone sticking to unifying, future-focused policy.
It’s abundantly clear that donors on both partisan teams want aggressive rhetoric and to feel as if they’re part of history. This is unlikely to end well for anyone.
As I predicted, Harris replacing Biden on the top of the Democratic Party ticket is being presented as the very salvation of America by a media desperate for a new storyline in an otherwise totally dismal election cycle. Unfortunately, the tendency of the US media to coalesce around a cheap narrative is further evidence of how divorced from empirical reality modern American society has become.
Unless Harris can break out of the usual partisan mold the election will remain a coin flip proposition. Given what happened around the last election that probably means a contested result, possibly involving a supreme court decision. With the Democrats explicitly attacking the legitimacy of the court, even if justified, that sets up the nightmare scenario of 2000 meets 2020.
That’s why I have to forecast that the USA’s support for Ukraine will remain in serious jeopardy whatever happens. Congress will almost certainly be closely divided, and even if the Democrats claim the House (possible) and hold the Senate (very improbable) the filibuster ensures that the latter remains a chokepoint for all major legislation. The Supreme Court is obviously partisan these days, committed to tearing apart the federal regulatory state so that Red States can do whatever they please while sucking down tax dollars produced in Blue States. But you can’t reform it without controlling 60 votes in the Senate, which nobody is going to get.
The forecast for America remains dysfunction with a chance of chaos. Ironically, it’s Ukraine visibly turning the tide and beating back Putin’s occupation that could reset matters. Whether that happens is up to Joe Biden.
I won’t hide the fact that I personally kind of like Kamala Harris. Many of the attacks directed against her the past few years - and quite a few have come from the left, too - are nothing more than thinly veiled bigotry leveled at Californians. Republicans in particular have invested a lot of money in portraying the state as a lawless socialist nightmare, mainly because the Republican Party is no longer competitive on the West Coast for cultural reasons. Party leaders have every reason to treat all 40 million Californians like Puritan Yankees have always done to the South.
Rural Californians are actively looked down on by posh suburban and urban coastal types, so they’re stuck relying on Republicans nationally to protect their local interests. This works about as well as Democrats in the South expecting D.C. to fix the region’s underdevelopment and society still half trapped in the post-Civil War years.
It’s hard for me not to see Harris as a thumb in the eye of the East Coast snobs and bigots who have gutted most of the country all my life. This doesn’t do anything for my total lack of trust in the Democratic Party, however. It’s a machine, and she’s just the new figurehead.
The media’s treatment of her shifting from not even subtly cribbing the excellent dark comedy Veep to acting like she’s the second coming of Barack Obama has been predictable but also jarring. The same people who once suggested that Biden should replace her on the ticket now rush to sing her praises.
Welcome to politics as church, where all that matters is staying in good graces with fellow team members and making everyone look good. Anyone who tunes out of the show is irrelevant, and that’s why up to 40% of Americans will sit out this election, like they always do.
Do keep in mind that there exists a prominent choir of Americans, mainly historians and liberal pundits, who actively use Ukraine as a wedge issue against Trump. That’s not to say they’re bad people or don’t care about Ukraine’s future in some sense. But be aware that if Team Blue elders decide that Ukraine must accept a bitter peace after a Harris victory, they’ll be among the first to justify it. This sort of thing is to be expected when politics becomes religion.
Ukraine’s own leaders, it should be noted, maintain close contacts with both the Harris and Trump camps. Politics is a dirty business, and one of Zelensky’s key advisers, Yermak. wisely talks to both sides. Power is power, and nobody with any really wants to see Putin win - not Trump or even Xi Jinping. The way powerful people think, anyone else’s gain is their loss. China, as Kuleba, Ukraine’s chief diplomat, obviously understands, would much prefer an independent Ukraine that remains a persistent thorn in Moscow’s side to a reinvigorated Muscovite empire. Beijing and Moscow are historic enemies, and neither has forgotten it.
Thankfully Ukraine is bigger than American partisan nonsense. In reality, odds are high that the USA will remain dysfunctional going forward whoever holds the Oval Office in 2025. I learned a long time ago that there is no hope in American federal politics. The outcomes range from a never-ending fustercluck to national dissolution. This latter option is more of a risk than virtually any American pundit will admit, and what’s ironic is that if done right it could give most Americans a more responsive federal government animated by a regionally-appropriate interpretation of the Constitution.
Instead, if Trump loses, an outright secession movement could easily begin in the Red States. If he is installed by the Supreme Court after a contested election and constitutional crisis, even Blue States might consider that option. In a 2020 wargame run by senior leaders from both parties that Democratic pundits later tried to downplay, one of the terminal outcomes was the Democratic candidate pressing West Coast governors to secede.
As unlikely as that might be, all bets are off if there’s widespread violence this winter. Fortunately, the most likely outcome remains simple dysfunction.
Most Americans are all talk. It’s highly notable that Trump’s near-assassination was not political based on the evidence recovered by investigators so far, despite months of rhetoric about Trump being America’s Hitler. The shooter was no partisan, just another American driven to self-immolate in hopes of making their mark on history the only way they know how: with an AR-15. It’s their revenge on a society that pretends to be open and inclusive but uses those claims to hide brutal repression against those who fail to conform.
I know that I say this a lot lately, but the warning remains justified: nothing in partisan America is exactly as it seems. It’s a lot easier to lie when you have millions of people ready to repeat what you say because you’ve managed to make them believe that you care about them. In election years, pundits start acting like Americans do around Christmas with pretending that NORAD tracks Santa Claus across North America and other saccharine twaddle.
When American politicians insist that the USA will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, or that there will be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine, always remember that Joe Biden was only going to withdraw from the election if the Almighty came down and told him to - and also, that the Almighty absolutely wasn’t.
American leadership is about maintaining the con up to the bitter end. These guys are just reflecting what people with money are willing to pay for. CEOs do it, so do politicians. Also generals.
In America, words don’t matter, only actions do. The same is true on the international stage. The USA can only demonstrate sufficient will to claim global leadership now if it gives Ukraine everything required to win the war short of nuclear arms.
Ukraine’s future is bound up with America’s mainly because the USA has a huge amount of equipment that Ukraine’s defenders badly need. Money is helpful, but if push came to shove Europe would be forced to give Ukraine a lot more aid than it presently is. The fight for Ukraine is the fight for a stable, democratic Europe. Ukraine’s victory is Europe’s, and so is it’s loss.
Meanwhile a Europe that actually does what people like Trump say they want and spend more on defense would ironically gain the freedom to ignore the USA going forward. In defense matters, aside from depth of inventory, the USA provides certain crucial enabling capabilities that Europe lacks. Once this is fixed in the next few years, the EU is going to wind up being an economic and democratic rival. Luckily, if there’s one thing that American politicians can’t do, it’s anything related to grand strategy.
The USA can, in adequately supporting Ukraine, both help restore its own leadership role and decimate the security threat posed by Moscow’s military potential for years to come. Unlike Putin’s empire, China doesn’t have the ability to challenge the US in two different hemispheres at once. China can’t seriously threaten Europe with military power except through a strong united russia.
So what can Biden do to leave the situation in a better place than it stands now? Simple: take charge in giving Ukraine everything it needs to win before the end of the year. Full stop.
It will take well into 2025 to actually defeat Putin’s forces, but if Ukraine has the kit by January it can do the rest. If Trump does try to yank aid, it will no longer matter.
Since Biden refuses to resign and let Harris take over now, as would be fitting, it is his obligation to the future to do everything in his power to ensure that Ukraine can seize victory by 2025 even if Trump tries to reduce or cut off aid. Sources close to Trump’s camp are proposing exactly what I’ve suggested they might - more aid to Ukraine without limits if Putin won’t scale back his aggression. Partisan analysts on Team Blue insist this is a lie, but they insist a lot of things without a shred of hard evidence these days. It’s all about team spirit.
Biden serving out the remainder of his term does make a certain kind of sense, as this allows Harris to campaign without being tied to the White House. However, given the likely impact of making her look like a continuation of him, an exceptionally unpopular president by historical standards - even more disliked than Trump - the effect could be a wash. She also might not campaign very well, while as president I expect she’d be a solid boring technocrat.
Regardless, visible progress on the ground in the Ukraine War is necessary to make Biden and Harris look strong. This is in their mutual best interest. Americans may not say they focus on foreign policy when voting, but that’s because they assume a certain level of competence. This is a big part of why Biden’s polling collapsed when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021. Between that, Covid surging despite his insistence that it was fading, and inflation, Biden lost the Mandate of Heaven. Harris has a chance to win it back though good campaigning and Ukrainian success in the field.
Between now and the end of Biden’s term Ukraine must receive thousands of armored vehicles. Abrams tanks, Bradley IFVs, Stryker and M-113 APCs, M-109 self-propelled howitzers - you name it, Ukrainian brigades need it. And while Europe ought to be digging deep too, the US has the deepest reserves in the world.
In September Ukraine should be able to initiate a series of local counteroffensives that slowly escalate as it learns how to break apart ruscist formations in the field. Weather won’t matter as much if there are no plans for a deep thrust towards the Azov Sea, meaning that Ukraine’s offensive can intensify despite the mud of autumn. Only the bitter cold of deep winter will force a pause, then in spring the push will start right back up again.
As I hope to finally lay out in a post this week, defeating Moscow’s forces is a matter of running broad, shallow offensives that are like sandpaper on orc units along the front line. Ukraine will switch these on and off depending on where Moscow sends reinforcements and make every effort to target formations pulled from one front to recuperate by going after them when they appear on another.
Ukraine needs literally dozens of brigades outfitted appropriately over the next year to carry this out, though. Only once the enemy ranks are thinned and reserves drained can a large amount of territory be recaptured in a single blow.
To build a house, you need materials and tools. To bake a cake, you have to combine all the ingredients in their correct proportions then keep it in an oven within the right temperature range and amount of time. Military affairs aren’t any different.
For better or for worse, in the grand scheme Biden’s legacy will be defined by how he handled the Ukraine War. If Biden fails to do the right thing while there’s still time, history will remember him not as the guy who saved NATO, but the reincarnation of Chamberlain who nearly lost Ukraine and set the stage for an even bigger tragedy down the line. But if he walks out of the White House having guaranteed that Ukraine retains the upper hand no matter what stunts Trump pulls, even middle-aged writers like myself will have to give him credit.
One beneficial aspect of Joe Biden’s vain dreams being dashed is that he no longer has any reason not to do the right thing while he can. Thanks to Americans placing a ridiculous amount of power in the Executive Branch since 1945 - something that I guarantee will come back to bite the country sooner rather than later - Biden can direct the Pentagon to do far more to assist Ukraine.
Quietly, behind the scenes, NATO officers at the middle and even higher levels in some cases are fully apprised of the gravity of the situation. They’ve almost certainly been moving heaven and earth to create back channels with industry and the Ukrainian government to make it possible for Ukraine to absorb modern arms.
It’s they that Biden needs to pay attention to now, not his failed Blinken-Burns-Sullivan Ivy League brain trust. Maybe now he finally understands that they’ve been failing him since day one.
Supposedly Biden’s instructions to Sullivan when he delegated management of the Ukraine War to the guy were to not start World War Three. It was Sullivan who chose to interpret that as allowing zero chance of nuclear escalation, ever.
All Biden has to do is instruct the layer of middle managers under him to shift their objective to ensuring Putin’s defeat. Unblock the bureaucratic red tape that prevents operational-level leaders across NATO and even the Pentagon from doing what they absolutely know needs to be done, and by the end of the year Ukraine can be well on the way to breaking the land bridge to Crimea once and for all.
Conclusion
Ukraine can win the war against Putin by the end of 2025 if it is finally treated as the ally American leaders keep saying it is. Words don’t mean much at this point: what Ukraine needs is the last layer of zip ties getting cut from its wrists.
The Pentagon recently announced a two billion dollar error stemming from accidentally using replacement cost instead of depreciated cost to bill the Ukraine aid budget. In doing so, it confirmed something I had been wondering about Ukraine aid from the start.
If Ukraine is sent an Abrams tank built in the 1990s, it’s silly to calculate its value as the same as one fresh off the assembly line in Ohio, which is approaching $10 million. An M1A2SEP with all the upgrades costs more even in inflation corrected terms than a classic Gulf War era M1A1, of which there are thousands in storage. But even its equivalent new cost today would be $5 million, at least 80% of its usable value has been lost even if perfectly maintained.
Parts get old and they out. Everything is built to last just as long as it might conceivably need to. That’s why it’s appropriate to bill the Ukraine account the depreciated cost, which using these totally approximate numbers comes to $1 million. The difference when you buy 500 M1A1 tanks is substantial, coming to the entire accounting error discovered by the Pentagon.
When Ukraine is receiving just $60 billion in military aid from a country that spends $900 billion annually, every billion counts. But Ukraine still stands to be able to entirely equip the fourteen brigades it currently has waiting for gear for less than the Pentagon’s latest oopsie.
All Biden has to do is give the okay for the arms to flow. Frankly, old Abrams and Bradleys likely cost more to keep in storage than they’re worth to US troops on a battlefield today.
Ukraine is fighting for its existence and needs anything better than a T-64 or BMP now. But let’s be real: if any US military officer thinks they’re successfully fighting a war with the equipment on hand now, they’re delusional. China can make a hundred drones for every tank the United States Army has.
It’s long past time to open the warehouses to Ukraine. No one can guarantee what the political scene in the USA will look like six months hence. After finally making the right decision about his re-election bid, Biden faces another crucial choice on properly supporting a democracy under attack.