Ukraine: what next?

Either back them properly, or not at all

Yesterday saw a joint statement from British PM Starmer and President Macron of France. They guaranteed to “support Ukraine unwaveringly and for as long as necessary to thwart Russia's war of aggression”.

However, years into the war, NATO’s strategy in Ukraine is being exposed as nonsense. Here’s why.

As I wrote in my Gaza article the other day, we must always go back to Alanbrooke when looking at strategy. To paraphrase strategic and operational design in a nutshell: select a political aim for the use of force; come up with a series of objectives to support that aim; assess what you need to do to achieve those objectives; measure resources against the objectives; come up with your priorities and a course of action.

So what is the political aim for Ukraine? Defeat, or “thwart”, Russia? If so, then the objectives have been to train Ukrainian forces and provide arms. But here is the issue: NATO has provided nowhere near enough materiel in terms of artillery, armour and air power, at any point, to enable Ukraine to defeat Russia. NATO’s strategy has fallen at the very first hurdle.

They have done just enough to create a rough air parity, air defence parity, drone parity and armour parity (in the sense that neither side has a decisive amount of any of these things to effect a clear breakthrough). Ukraine were able to repel the initial assaults on Kyiv, but since then have been bogged down in an interminable stalemate.

Ukraine must take some blame. Their “big offensive” last summer was a disaster, opting to put pressure along the Russian line, hoping for a fracture that never came. A far better plan would have been one concentrated armoured push at a weak point, to try and breach the Russian lines in force.

Politics, fear and weakness on the part of key allies must also take some blame. Delays in supply in terms of both quantity and type of military materiel; wobbliness on the part of allies like Germany (heavily reliant on Russian gas); and a failure to allow Ukraine to use western weaponry to its fullest extent by striking into Russia itself, thereby giving vital safety to Russian rear areas, allowing the relatively risk-free staging of arms and other logistics.

At this point, it is also questionable if Ukraine has ever had the manpower to defeat the Russian ability to churn meat into the meat grinder that has resulted from the aforesaid lack of the right weapons. In a meat grinder, the side with the most meat wins. And that side currently is not Ukraine.

So, NATO leaders can “support Ukraine unwaveringly”, but without giving them the right amount of aircraft, suppression of enemy air defences, artillery and/or armour, this is just hot air guff. It achieves little more than turning alive Russians and Ukrainians into dead Russians and Ukrainians without any real strategic, or apparently even tactical, benefit. The West’s reticence to support Ukraine in a manner that supports the political aim of defeating Russia has created a meat race to expend supplies of manpower first. Winner takes all.

So what are the options? First, was the political aim right? Or has the West played a horribly cynical game with Ukrainian lives, and used them to burn up the once-feared Russian Army? I hope not.

So if “defeat Russia” is the end game, then we have one of two options: arm the Ukrainians more, and bring in Western air power to end the stalemate and give Ukraine an actual chance at winning.

Or, accept we created an unachievable aim and force both sides to the negotiating table, with all the ramifications for future Russian military threat, subversion of our societies, interference in our elections, assassinations on our soil, etc.

I support the former alongside a robust reminder about Mutually Assured Destruction, but we are now at the point where decisions need to be made: otherwise this strategic drift will just lead to thousands more people dying in vain, as Russia will win the battle of “who has the most people”. And I will not morally accept that the West is simply maintaining a war of attrition, waiting for Russia to collapse economically at some unknown point in the near future - that is a disgusting game to play with Ukrainian lives, and said Russian economic collapse is by no means a given.

NATO faces a choice: arm Ukraine properly, or get both sides to stop, and then face the continuing threat that is a toxic and expansionist Russian foreign policy.

“Support Ukraine unwaveringly”, Macron and Starmer? Ok. Prove it. Ukrainian blood is going to be on their hands if they do not.