28 May 2024

Summer is just starting in Ukraine, and it is looking "dangerous"

Jeremy Bowen:

Ukraine faces its worst crisis since the war began

6 hours ago

Jeremy Bowen,BBC international editor

Ukraine’s inherent weakness is that it depends on others for funding and arms.
It faces an enemy that makes most of its own weapons and has many more people.
Russia’s population of more than 140 million is around three-and-a-half times Ukraine’s.
That matters in a war where battle deaths are in the tens of thousands.

BBC map shows areas under Russian military control, limited Russian military control and claimed Russian control north of Kharkiv as of 23 May

In the US, domestic politics intervened.

Joe Biden’s request for a "security supplemental" that included $60bn (£47bn) for Ukraine was held up in the US Congress for months, mostly by supporters of Donald Trump who wanted the money to deal with matters closer to home, especially illegal immigration over the southern border with Mexico.

The supplemental was only signed into law by President Biden on 24 April.

Europe accuses US of profiting from war

EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.

The U.S. has by far been the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine, supplying more than $15.2 billion in weapons and equipment since the start of the war.

The EU has so far provided about €8 billion of military equipment to Ukraine

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Even the US military’s considerable logistics capability will take months to restock Ukraine’s arsenals, at a time when Moscow is producing weapons and shells as fast as it can, in an economy redesigned for a long war.

“This is a war of production” according to a senior official at NATO headquarters in Belgium. “Russia is outproducing us in those things we know Ukraine needs.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is eagerly awaiting the deployment of retired Nato F-16 fighter jets

[ ] ...European allies of Ukraine are trying, with varying degrees of success, to offer more support. The new American package of military aid will make a difference once it arrives. It means Ukraine can keep fighting. It will not win the war, and it will be the last before the US presidential election in November. If Donald Trump wins, no-one knows if he will push as hard as Joe Biden to help Ukraine.

Ukraine is also helping itself, pioneering new forms of drone warfare. Maritime drones, uncrewed boats packed with explosives, have sunk Russian warships and reopened export routes through the Black Sea.
Momentum in long wars shifts back and forth. Now Russia is pushing hard, as it senses it has a window of opportunity before Ukraine gets its new weapons.
One big question this dangerous summer is whether Russia’s size, weight and tenacity can inflict a battlefield defeat on Ukraine that will change the strategic equation in this war.

Ukraine and its allies believe that Russia does not have the combat power to do more than take limited territory at a high cost in men and materiel.

But think back a year, to the time when hopes were high – too high – for Ukraine’s summer offensive. Russia is stronger now, and without a qualitative change in Ukraine’s favor, Moscow will do all it can to grind its way deeper into this war.