Page 47 - bne magazine September 2023

bne September 2023 Eastern Europe I 47
of the endless appropriations. Biden asked Congress for another $20bn in aid for Ukraine but the call was met with resistance and Republicans in the House have voiced opposition to additional money for Ukraine, reported the Washington Post.
“The bleak outlook [for the counter- offensive], briefed to some Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, has already prompted a blame game
inside closed-door meetings. Some Republicans are now baulking at President Biden’s request for an additional $20.6bn in Ukraine aid given the offensive’s modest result,” the Washington Post reports.
Enthusiasm amongst the general public is also fading. A recent CNN poll found the majority of Americans are against continuing to fund Ukraine, although the majority of Democrats are for it, while the majority of Republicans
are against it. Overall, 55% say the
US Congress should not authorise additional funding to support Ukraine vs. 45% who say Congress should.
In Germany, where support for Ukraine has been strong amongst the population, the right-wing AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party has become the second largest party in the country and has a strong anti-war platform.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on August 17 acknowledged the slow pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive but said Kyiv would not stop fighting until all its land is retaken. “We don’t care how long it takes,” he told the news agency Agence France-Presse.
More people and politicians are
coming round to the idea that the war
is unwinnable and are starting to ask why the West should keep funding it. As the next US presidential election heaves into sight, the war in Ukraine is already becoming a political issue in the campaign – one that the Kremlin will watch closely.
Counteroffensive going slowly
Part of the problem is the much vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed
to provide the spectacular successes that were achived with the Kharkiv assault last September.
Having provided Kyiv with significant new and powerful weapons following the Ramstein meeting in February last year, including a commitment to send modern Leopard 2 tanks and long- range missiles, the West was hoping for another hammer blow that would smash through Russian lines and pave the way for ceasefire talks.
However, that has failed to happen. According to reports, the UK and the US were advising Kyiv to commit a large amount of reserves to a frontal assault and accept the high casualty rate that entails.
“Joint war games conducted by the US, British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line,” according to US and Western officials talking to the Washington Post.
“But Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield and switch to a tactic of relying on smaller units to push forward across different areas of the front. That resulted in Ukraine making incremental gains in different pockets over the summer,” the paper reports, adding that the outlook for the counteroffensive is “bleak”, according to Western officials' assessment.
Well aware that a big counter-attack was on its way, Russia did not waste those eight months, while Kyiv tried to
cross and have up to five or six mines per square metre in some places, according to reports. The Ukrainian advance has been slowed to a crawl as a result.
Hopes were still alive in the first month of the counter-offensive of a big push after probing the Russian lines and “shaping” Russia’s defences with feinted attacks on the line in one place to weaken it in another. But if this was the strategy it has failed to create an obvious weakness.
Ukraine’s commanders are also now coming in for criticism for committing too many resources for the assault around Bakhmut, the epicentre of the war for
the last eight months, which has reduced resources in the south where Ukraine was hoping to cut through the Russian-held land bridge that connects Crimea to the Russian mainland along the coast.
In the south the town of Melitopol is key as two major highways and a rail line meet at the town, which are used to supply Russian troops from Crimea in the land bridge. But despite some progress, the AFU are still no way near taking the town, the Washington Post reports.
“That means Kyiv won’t fulfil its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push,” an intelligence report said, cited by the Washington Post. That is because Russia has shown “brutal proficiency in defending occupied territory through a phalanx of minefields and trenches”, the report said.
And that is after all the AFU reserves, including the elite 82nd Air Assault brigade, a Western-trained and entirely
“Enthusiasm amongst the general public
is also fading. A recent CNN poll found the majority Americans are against continuing to fund Ukraine”
assemble sufficient Western materiel and train troops in their use, Russia built very extensive defences including hundreds of kilometres of minefields. Those minefields have proven impossible to
Western-armed unit, have now all been committed to the fight with no visible effect.
The prospects of even more, even
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