By that time, the Russian troops had been mobilized and had started to move toward the northern, eastern, and southern borders of Ukraine. Writes Hugh Fitzgerald
On February 25, with Russian soldiers just inside Kyiv, the Americans offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelensky from the city. He answered the Bidenites with ill-concealed exasperation: “I need weapons, not a ride.” He, like many Ukrainians, has been appalled by how slow Washington has been to supply weapons in sufficient quantities to halt the Russian advance. Last fall, Biden authorized $60 million in immediate military assistance to Ukraine, then another $200 million in December. By that time, the Russian troops had been mobilized and had started to move toward the northern, eastern, and southern borders of Ukraine. After so much slow-motion preparation, the Russians suddenly invaded on Feb. 23.
For two whole months, from late December to late February, as the Russians kept moving their troops and weapons into place, the U.S. watched, while Biden kept announcing he was confident that the Russians were going to invade but nonetheless, he sent no more military aid until the Russians were besieging Kyiv, when he finally announced that another $350 million in military aid would be sent. It was too little, too late. Back in December, the US and its NATO partners could — and should — have sent in a billion dollars worth of military assistance, especially Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and military drones. When this war in the Ukraine is all over, Congressional committees should investigate how badly the Bidenites performed, and how, had they responded by supplying the right weapons, in the right quantities, just as soon as Putin started moving his forces toward Ukraine, the outcome might have been different.
Better air defenses – especially those man-portable Stinger missiles — might have provided a level of deterrence that didn’t exist. Analysts say the prospect of bombers being shot down in flight might have forced Putin to reevaluate his plans. But only a fraction of the Stingers the Ukrainians needed were sent. The day after the Russians invaded, Ukraine’s Defense Minister made a direct plea to Congress: ”We need as much Stinger and anti-tank weapons as possible.” Those Stingers ought to have been sent in late December.
The Ukrainians have apparently made good use of the Stingers they do have. Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry said that a Russian missile was shot down before dawn Saturday (Feb. 26) as it headed for the dam of the sprawling water reservoir that serves Kyiv. “Had the dam been destroyed, it would have caused catastrophic casualties and losses—including flooding of residential areas of Kyiv and its suburbs,” said Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry.
Even after that plane headed toward the dam had been shot down, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov insisted at a briefing on Feb. 26 that no civilian sites are targeted: “Let me stress once again that only infrastructure sites of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are being targeted, ruling out damage to residential and social infrastructure. Was the water supply of Kyiv a “civilian target”?
In the first week of the war, the Ukrainians have been skillfully fighting back. Around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian tanks and other vehicles have been destroyed or are unable to move because of the damage inflicted. In Kiev, Ukrainian soldiers have mounted defenses and put up barricades to stop the tanks. Reservists between the ages of 18 and 60 are being conscripted. Civilians are lining up to be handed rifles or machine guns.The Ukrainians only had 18,000 guns to hand out on Feb. 25. What kept the Bidenites from sending a million guns back in December? One American official said “We didn’t want to provoke Putin.” How did that work out?
Now the Americans should be transferring massive numbers of Stingers, Javelins, drones, sniper rifles and machine guns, to Poland, for immediate transfer in caravans of trucks to the western border of Ukraine, where they can be picked up by the Ukrainian military to deliver to soldiers on the front lines, including those still fighting the Russians in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
Even if the Russians were to take Kyiv, and then to subdue all of Ukraine, their army would still require many soldiers to occupy and hold Ukraine, a nation with a population of 45 million. The Russians will still face a ferocious resistance. The West owes it to the Ukrainians, whom it supplied with too few weapons, and too late, to deter or halt the Russian invasion, to now furnish the Ukrainian resistance with all the weapons it requests.
For years the Americans were reluctant to modernize Ukraine’s Soviet-era defenses, leaving the country dramatically vulnerable to a massive Russian bombing and missile campaign. A confluence of forces — fear of provoking Russia, worries that the technology could fall into Russian hands, doubts that the Ukraine could operate the systems – prevented the U.S. and its allies from granting Ukrainian requests for advanced surface-to-air missiles in the years after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Now American officials, having sent weapons so late, and in such small quantities, are scrambling to find ways to help the Ukrainian forces to preserve themselves. “We certainly all missed an opportunity,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star Air Force general who was supreme allied commander in 2014, when Russia took Crimea. “The West, NATO, and all of the individual nations involved missed an opportunity. I think we’re looking at it in retrospect now and thinking maybe we should have made a different decision.”
Retired Admiral James Stavridis, who preceded Breedlove as NATO’s supreme allied commander, agrees: “I think air defense would have been a very smart move. If we had put more out there sooner, we would not be where we are now.”
Indeed.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians continue to fight, apparently surprising the Russians by the strength of their resistance. There are now three examples of Ukrainian heroism to sustain the Ukrainians at war. The first is the true story of the 13 Ukrainian border guards who were manning a post on Snake Island in the Black Sea. A Russian warship sailed close to the island and called on the Ukrainians to surrender. Instead, the border guards shouted back at the Russians: “Russian ship, go f**k yourself.” They were promptly shelled by the Russians and all 13 were reportedly killed, although this has been disputed. Nonetheless, they have entered the consciousness of Ukrainians as a collective of heroes: “the 13.”
Another hero may or may not have done what is attributed to him, but for the Ukrainians it is fortifying to believe in the story of a Ukrainian pilot, known as “the Ghost of Kyiv,” who is said to have shot down a total of six Russian planes: four Russian fighter jets – two Su-35 Flankers, one Su-27 Flanker and one MiG-29 Fulcrum, as well as two ground-attack aircraft, so-called S—25 Frogfoots. It appears that those six planes were indeed shot down, but whether it was one Ukrainian pilot, or three, or six, who were responsible for those six kills is not known. Still, it is useful for Ukrainian morale to believe in this “Ghost of Kyiv,” a Slavic Scarlet Pimpernel.
The third hero is Ukraine’s remarkable leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, who before he was elected president in 2019, was a comic, appearing in both movies and on television. In his television show “Servant of the People,” he played the president of the Ukraine. Now life has imitated art. He has shown himself to be a serious and brave leader. With Kyiv besieged, and knowing that he is #1 on Putin’s list of Ukrainians to be killed, he has refused repeatedly to leave, even turning down an American offer to “extract” him from Kyiv. He’s staying there to inspire his people with his stirring speeches, and by setting an example for his countrymen when, in the midst of bombardments, he chooses to walk the streets of central Kyiv, out in the open, where Russian bombs, or the Chechen death squad sent by Putin to eliminate his most formidable Ukrainian enemies, might find him. Zelensky’s message is simple “We are here, we are not laying down any arms, we are going to defend our nation.”
Indomitable, Churchillian, a hero of our time.
