ISW: The West enabled the current Russian offensive by tying Ukraine's hands

 From the Institute for the Study of War:

"Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 12, 2024

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, Kateryna Stepanenko, and George Barros

...Vovchansk's proximity to the international border affords Russian forces "many opportunities," including allowing Russian forces to conduct operations with limited forces and means to achieve a specific result; provides Russian forces with a "small shoulder of delivery" to allow stable control and fire support without moving their artillery; and allows for quick fuel and weapons deliveries to the frontline. 

Russian forces are reaping the benefits of the West's long-term restriction on Ukraine using Western-provided weapons to strike legitimate military targets on Russian territory — territory that Russian forces now depend on to sustain their offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast. Western officials have prohibited Ukraine from using Western-supplied weapons to strike targets on Russian territory, and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stated their adherence to this condition.[30] UK Foreign Minister David Cameron only recently greenlit Ukrainian forces to use UK-provided weapons to strike targets in Russian territory, but this is insufficient for Ukraine's interdiction needs in Russian territory and came too late to allow Ukrainian forces to inhibit Russia's ability to concentrate forces along the international border.[31] Ukrainian forces have previously used US-provided HIMARS to devastating effect, particularly in forcing Russian forces to withdraw from the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast in November 2022 and continue to use HIMARS and other US- and Western-provided weapons to strike Russian force concentrations in rear and deep rear areas in occupied Ukraine.[32] Ukrainian forces regularly conduct drone strikes against infrastructure and airfields in Russia, but these lack the same interdiction effects that Ukrainian forces now need to generate to undermine the Russian offensive operations.[33]   Ukrainian forces would greatly benefit from being able to use advanced long-range weapons systems to disrupt Russian logistics nodes and routes that are currently supplying the Kharkiv offensive but must instead rely on their limited and depleted stock of indigenous weapons.

Kremlin information operations encouraging Western self-deterrence likely aimed to allow Russian forces to build up and launch offensive operations without the threat of Ukrainian strikes against military and logistics assets. Russian President Vladimir Putin, senior Kremlin officials, and pro-Kremlin mouthpieces have regularly threatened Western states and accused them of "provocations" for continuing to provide military assistance to Ukraine.[34] Kremlin mouthpieces have maintained this rhetorical line even after the passage of a $61 billion dollar US military assistance package to Ukraine in late April, likely in support of an effort to prevent Ukrainian forces from using these weapons to degrade Russia's various ongoing offensive efforts.[35] The Kremlin will likely continue to leverage this information operation as part of its ongoing reflexive control campaign to inhibit Ukraine's ability to use all its available weapons to defend against the current Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast, forcing Ukraine to allocate other resources to a less effective defense and creating opportunities for Russian forces on other sectors of the front to exploit.[36]

[30] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63882955 ; https://www.telegraph.co dot uk/us/comment/2024/04/10/russia-ukraine-war-putin-sanctions-mike-johnson-us-aid/

[31] https://isw.pub/UkrWar050324

[32] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Feb%203%20Russian%2...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[33] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/May%2011%20Russian%...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/March%209%20Russian...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...:

[34] https://isw.pub/UkrWar050324; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/denying-russia%E2%80%99s-o...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/April%2020%20Russia...; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive...

[35] https://isw.pub/UkrWar042424; https://isw.pub/UkrWar050624; https://isw.pub/UkrWar050324; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/April%2020%20Russia...

[36] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://isw.pub/UkrWar050624"

 

 

Timothy Snyder: Russia can lose this war

 CNN / Yahoo!News from May 8:

On Thursday Russia will celebrate Victory Day, its commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Domestically, this is nostalgia. In the 1970s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev created a cult of victory. Russia under Putin has continued the tradition.

Abroad, this is intimidation. We are meant to think that Russia cannot lose.

And far too many of us, during Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, have believed that. In February 2022, when Russia undertook its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the consensus was that Ukraine would fall within days.

Even today, when Ukraine has held its own for more than two years, the prevailing view among Russia’s friends in Congress and in the Senate is that Russia must eventually win. Moscow’s success is not on the battlefield, but in our minds.

Russia can lose. And it should lose, for the sake of the world — and for its own sake.

The notion of an invincible Red Army is propaganda. The Red Army was formidable, but it was also beatable. Of its three most consequential foreign wars, the Red Army lost two.

It was defeated by Poland in 1920. It defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, after nearly collapsing in 1941. (Its win in that instance was part of a larger coalition and with decisive American economic assistance.) Soviet forces were in trouble in Afghanistan immediately after their 1979 invasion and had to withdraw a decade later.

And the Russian army of today is not the Red Army. Russia is not the USSR. Soviet Ukraine was a source of resources and soldiers for the Red Army. In that victory of 1945, Ukrainian soldiers in the Red Army took huge losses — greater than American, British and French losses combined. It was disproportionately Ukrainians who fought their war to Berlin in the uniform of the Red Army.

Today, Russia is fighting not together with Ukraine but against Ukraine. It is fighting a war of aggression on the territory of another state. And it lacks the American economic support — Lend-Lease — that the Red Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany. In this constellation, there is no particular reason to expect Russia to win. One would expect, instead, that Russia’s only chance is to prevent the West from helping Ukraine — by persuading us that its victory is inevitable, so that we don’t apply our decisive economic power.

The last six months bear this out: Russia’s minor battlefield victories came at a time when the United States was delaying Ukraine aid, rather than supplying it.

Today’s Russia is a new state. It has existed since 1991. Like Brezhnev before him, Russian President Vladimir Putin rules through nostalgia. He refers to the Soviet and also the Russian imperial past. But the Russian Empire also lost wars. It lost the Crimean War in 1856. It lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. It lost the First World War in 1917. In none of those three cases was Russia able to keep forces in the field for more than about three years.

In the United States there is great nervousness about a Russian defeat. If something seems impossible, we cannot imagine what could happen next. And so there is a tendency, even among supporters of Ukraine, to think that the best resolution is a tie.

Such thinking is unrealistic. And it reveals, behind the nerves, a strange American conceit.

No one can guide a war in such a way. And nothing in our prior attempts to influence Russia suggests that we can exercise that kind of influence. Russia and Ukraine are both fighting to win. The questions are: who will win, and with what consequences?

If Russia wins, the consequences are horrifying: a risk of a larger war in Europe, more likelihood of a Chinese adventure in the Pacific, the weakening of international legal order generally, the likely spread of nuclear weapons, the loss of faith in democracy.

It is normal for Russia to lose wars. And, in general, this led Russians to reflect and reform. Defeat in Crimea forced an autocracy to end serfdom. Russia’s loss to Japan led to an experiment with elections. The Soviet failure in Afghanistan led to Gorbachev’s reforms and thus the end of the cold war.

Beneath the Russian particularities, history offers a more general and still more reassuring lesson about empires. Russia is fighting today an imperial war. It denies the existence of the Ukrainian state and nation, and it carries out atrocities that recall the worst of the European imperial past.

The peaceful Europe of today consists of powers that lost their last imperial wars and then chose democracy. It is not only possible to lose your last imperial war: it is also good, not only for the world, but for you.

Russia can lose this war, and should, for the sake of Russians themselves. A defeated Russia means not only the end of senseless losses of young life in Ukraine. It is also Russia’s one chance to become a post-imperial country, one where reform is possible, one where Russians themselves might be protected by law and able to cast meaningful votes.

Defeat in Ukraine is Russia’s historical chance for normality — as Russians who want democracy and the rule of law will say.

Like the United States and Europe, Ukraine celebrates the victory of 1945 on May 8th rather than May 9th. Ukrainians have every right to remember and interpret that victory: they suffered more than Russians from German occupation and died in huge numbers on the battlefield.

And Ukrainians are right to think that Russia today, like Nazi Germany in 1945, is a fascist imperialist regime that can and must be defeated. Fascism was defeated last time because a coalition held firm and applied its superior economic power. The same holds true now.

 

Kasparov and Hodges appeal for urgent help for Ukraine

 From CNN / Yahoo!News:

"Opinion: A strategy is needed now before it’s too late for Ukraine

Opinion by Garry Kasparov and Ben Hodges

 

Editor’s note: Garry Kasparov is a Russian opposition leader who founded and chairs the Renew Democracy Initiative, or RDI. Gen. Ben Hodges served as the commanding general of US Army Europe and is a member of RDI’s board of directors. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.

“Better late than never” is probably a poor operating principle for the US government. But it was in this spirit that Congress finally passed essential aid to frontline US allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delay. The fight to get the nearly $61 billion aid package for Ukraine illustrates the ad hoc nature of US support for Kyiv — tactics without strategy. For all of the resources that President Joe Biden and Congress have put forward, Washington has never sincerely tried to piece them together into a cohesive plan for Ukraine.

Now that the House of Representatives has gotten its act together, we need to make up for lost time. Partisan procrastination cost the Ukrainians ground they must now recoup.

We need to ensure that the funds Washington has laid out for Ukraine are translated into the right tools —delivered to the right places at the right time. And we need to shore up flagging domestic support for Ukraine among key Republican constituencies so that this aid package isn’t the last.

Above all, the president must distill the case for Ukraine into a digestible endgame. Many Americans have been understandably skeptical given the prospect of open-ended war, and the Biden administration’s well-intentioned but clumsy framing of aiding Ukraine “for as long as it takes” hasn’t helped. Instead, Biden should outline specific US goals: Ukrainian victory — and, with it, Russian defeat.

The president should not waver on this point. He must repeatedly and consistently remind Americans why both Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat are in our strategic interest and how we are going to do everything needed to achieve these strategic outcomes. Our combined political and military experience gives us unique insight into what this game plan should look like.

While lawmakers haggled over Biden’s foreign aid bill, Ukraine suffered setbacks. The Russians are closing in around Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, while making modest gains past the town of Avdiivka near the front lines in the east.

Ukraine’s position is grave, but if Kyiv and its American and European allies act decisively now, Ukraine can still win — and this means besting Russia on the battlefield.

In practice, it means providing Ukraine the ability to not only defend itself but also to proactively deny Russia the ability to attack. The United States and its allies must hasten the delivery of F-16s and other fixed-wing aircraft while ramping up training for Ukrainian pilots. These planes can help defend the skies over eastern and southern cities such as Kharkiv and Odesa while taking the fight to the missile launch sites in Russia and the Black Sea from which Moscow is terrorizing civilians.

Crimea remains an important base for Russian aviation and sea power. In advance of the ultimate objective of reclaiming the peninsula, Kyiv must make it untenable for Russia to continue using it as a springboard for harassing Ukraine. MQ-9A Reaper drones provide a nimble option that can play both offense and defense, while long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), Storm Shadow, SCALP or Taurus ballistic and cruise missiles will place Crimea and every other inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine under the gun. Ukraine can then target and destroy Russian headquarters, logistics and artillery. Meanwhile, additional Patriot missile batteries will be necessary to replicate the robust shield Ukrainians have erected over their capital in an effort to protect other cities.

As important as each of these weapons systems is, they will be worth little if they are not tied to a strategy. The United States, Ukraine and our other allies in Europe must understand the timeline for dispatching this material and how it fits into Ukrainian victory.

Different weapons systems may reach the battlefield at different times: Some equipment is pre-positioned in Germany and Poland. If approved, drones could be dispatched fairly quickly — within days or weeks. Patriot missiles might follow over several weeks. F-16s are important but may not see action until midsummer at earliest. These tools will allow Ukraine to threaten Crimea in a matter of months while continuing to strike Russian energy infrastructure.

But the front line may not change much. Rather, 2024 will be a year of industrial competition. The recently approved aid package will carry Ukraine through the next several months, while Kyiv refills and enhances its arsenal, grows its forces and refines its logistics — essential preparation for the fight still to come.

It is equally important to understand that this aid package cannot be the last. Ukraine will need more support from its democratic allies to repel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The strategy we propose is not only military — it’s political as well. Narrative warfare in America makes the kinetic warfare being waged in Ukraine possible.

Kremlin-fueled conspiracy theories have taken root in the modern-day Republican Party. There are certainly those who will never change their tune. Yet Ukraine’s circumstances demand that we knock on every door to refute lies and probe every potential audience for support. We have discovered that many will move if given the right evidence and a message to which they can relate.

That’s why our organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, brought a delegation of British Conservatives to meet with their Republican counterparts and encourage support for Ukraine. We may not agree with our Tory colleagues on everything, but they are well-positioned to champion Kyiv’s cause from the right. We urge Ukraine’s champions of all political stripes to coordinate and find allies who can open up unexpected reservoirs of support. It will pay dividends: Thirteen of the 22 Republican representatives with whom the British mission met ultimately voted for the national security supplemental.

Fabrications about Ukrainian persecution of Christians are among the most pernicious Russian lies about the war. These claims are outrageous, but the salience of religion for many American voters means it is critical ground that we cannot afford to cede. Working with the Free Russia Forum, a Russian pro-democracy group cofounded by one of the authors, we shared an important memo with lawmakers demonstrating how, in reality, it is Russia persecuting non-Orthodox Christians while using the Orthodox Church as an instrument of espionage and other sacrilegious behavior. More must be done to explain the conflict’s religious context and the lengths Ukraine takes to defend the faithful.

America’s strategy for Ukraine is missing in action. On the front lines, we must determine what pieces in the US arsenal will help Ukraine win and make Russia lose. In the political sphere, we need a persuasive message that guarantees domestic support for consistent legislated aid to Ukraine.

The national security supplemental’s passage provides the United States with the tools to support Kyiv. Now we need a plan to put them into service."

***

To me, the problem is that at least since 1994 (the year of the Budapest Memorandum), the USA has been becoming increasingly pro-Russian. It keeps disarming freedom-loving neighbours of Russia with promises of protection that are in reality just sweet lies, and then bullying them to accept Russian land grabs. By now, both major US parties will be happiest if Russia just takes all land it wants and slaughters all people it doesn't like so that there is finally no risk of "escalation".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem with the Global South

 A title from the Times of India:

Russia fends off Ukrainian aggression, retaliates by destroying village; Civilians film the interception

This title, appearing not in the blog of some unhinged individual but in a major media outlet, perfectly illustrates the foggy ethics characteristic for the Global South (formerly the Third World). The lack of clear understanding of good and evil, and of the need for the good to prevail over evil, is the root cause of the incurable poverty and other societal ills of the Global South countries.

Ukrainians pay with their lives for Biden's pathological fear of their victory

 Laura Kelly, the Hill / Yahoo!News:

"US commitment to Ukraine grows murkier

President Biden’s supporters and former U.S. officials are expressing frustration and confusion over the White House’s Ukraine strategies...

The White House recently pushed back against proposals that would give NATO and Western allies a greater leadership role moving forward, even as U.S. aid to fight against Russian troops has been stalled for months in Congress.

“There is a disagreement in the U.S. government about this, and I won’t predict how it comes out,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The coming weeks could be decisive, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promising to bring a new Ukraine aid package to the floor. But it’s unclear how robust the package will be, or whether Johnson can navigate opposition from many within his own party.

If it fails or comes up short of Democratic demands, Biden could face growing pressure to embrace a less U.S.-centric coalition backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Daalder, along with former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, pitched in an article in Foreign Affairs a proposal that NATO take over the U.S.-led Ramstein group to coordinate weapons deliveries for Kyiv, among other ideas that NATO is now discussing ahead of the alliance’s July summit.

“The United States needs to get off the high horse that we know everything,” Daalder said, answering a question from The Hill at a summit hosted by Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies...

The situation is desperate for Ukraine. U.S. military officials have told Congress that Ukrainians are rationing artillery in the absence of more American support, putting them even more at a deficit against Russia’s war machine.

The Institute for the Study of War said Friday that Russian forces have “inflicted increasing and long-term damage to Ukrainian energy infrastructure this spring,” and that the Russians have been so successful, in part, because Ukraine is running out of U.S.-supplied air defenses.

“This is alarming because it suggests that absent a rapid resumption of U.S. military aid, Russian forces can continue to deal severe damage to Ukrainian forces and infrastructure even with the limited number of missiles Russia is likely to have available in the coming months,” the group wrote in its assessment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pleading with supporters to follow through on commitments.

“It is critically important that each partner deliver on its promises regarding the supply of weapons and ammunition, as well as our agreements on co-production,” he said Thursday.

“Every day Russian missiles strike, and every day the number of promises increases. Every day, Ukrainian soldiers on the front line endure the brutal pressure of Russian artillery and guided bombs. The reality must finally start to match the words.”

While Donfried and Daalder call for Congress to follow through on delivering Biden’s request for aid to Ukraine immediately, they are also putting pressure on the administration to “secure Ukraine’s future.”

Part of this includes getting the U.S. to clarify and make concrete language surrounding Ukraine joining NATO. They are critical of ambiguous promises made at NATO’s 2023 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where NATO leaders agreed Kyiv can join the alliance “when conditions are met.”

“I thought that was confusing, and so I just think we owe it to the Ukrainians to be clear about what those conditions are,” Donfried said.

They also call for the U.S. and NATO allies to “consider supplying Kyiv with weapons that are currently off the table, such as U.S. ATACMS and German Taurus long-range missiles.”

While the United Kingdom and France have sent Ukraine long-range missiles, the Biden administration has maintained its opposition to sending ATACMS, or Army Tactical Missile Systems, over what it says is concern of triggering an escalation from Moscow.

The administration’s guidance for Ukraine is to not use American-made weapons to hit inside Russia — with the understanding that Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory can be carried out with other weapons.

But Donfried said that over two and a half years of war, the time is right for the administration to lean further forward.

“That fear of escalation often needs to be tempered by faith and deterrence,” she said.

“We feel that we’ve learned some lessons over the past two and a half years. We were hesitant on sending other weapons systems. We have done so and we have not seen an escalation … now it is the moment for the U.S. and the Germans to join the British and the French in sending those long-range missiles to Ukraine.”

But, Donfried cautioned, “is that where the White House is gonna land? I don’t know.”

Confusion about the White House’s path forward on Ukraine is raising anxiety among Kyiv and its supporters, who are newly frustrated by the administration’s position criticizing Ukraine for hitting Russian oil refineries.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly told Kyiv last month to stop hitting Russian oil refineries over fears of driving up oil prices, an argument raised by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this week in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And comments earlier this week from Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs, saying the Kremlin-connected refineries are not legitimate military targets has further sowed confusion.

“We have concerns about striking at civilian targets,” Wallander said about the Russian oil refineries. But, she added, “they are owned by private Russian citizens who are part of the Putin regime. That is correct.”

One person who lobbies the administration for more support for Ukraine said some U.S. officials have been “clearly embarrassed” over questions about the pushback on hitting Russia’s oil infrastructure — one of its main funding streams for its war.

“That speaks to differences within the administration, but it has not affected policy,” the person said.

Ukraine’s supporters say comments like these are pulling the U.S. further away from positions of other allies... One European official, requesting anonymity to speak candidly, called the Biden administration’s comments about the oil refineries “perverse.”

“It is perverse to tell a party at war not to attack the war machine of the aggressor party while also not delivering military aid to help the victim protect its own infrastructure, residential buildings, maternity wards, and kindergartens,” the official said.

“The administration’s pathological fear of escalation and of Ukrainian success is one major reason for the death of so many Ukrainians.”"

Biden can help Ukraine but prefers not to

 Since the USA stopped giving aid to Ukraine nearly 6 months ago, Russia has been slowly advancing and Ukraine is being slowly but surely destroyed under the stunned eyes of all good people in the world. Biden's excuse is that at his rival Trump's bidding, the Republican Congress chairman Mike Johnson refuses to put a $60 billion aid package to vote, single-handedly blocking the aid to Ukraine. However, there is more to the story, as David Axe wrote in the Forbes two months ago:

"Joe Biden Could Send Millions Of Artillery Shells To Ukraine, For Free, Tomorrow. And It’s Perfectly Legal

There’s a bureaucratically complex but perfectly legal way for the administration of U.S. president Joe Biden to send to Ukraine the thing Ukrainian brigades need the most: artillery shells. Millions of them.

As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year and Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress continue to withhold U.S. funding for Ukraine, Ukrainian artillery batteries are desperately low on ammunition.

Six months ago, Ukrainian batteries were firing as many as 6,000 shells a day and, in some sectors of the 600-mile front line, even matching Russians batteries’ own shellfire.

Today, four months after Republicans began blocking aid, the Ukrainians are firing just 2,000 shells a day. At the same time, the Russians—flush with shells from North Korea and Iran—are firing up as many as 10,000 shells a day.

That firepower disparity is the main reason why Russian forces are—admittedly at great cost—slowly advancing in and around the eastern city of Avdiivka, currently the locus of Russia’s winter offensive.

Given indicted ex-president Donald Trump’s cultish hold over the Republican Party and Trump’s longstanding affinity for authoritarian Russian leader Vladimir Putin, there’s seems to be little prospect of Biden getting much, or any, fresh funding for Ukraine now that Republicans hold a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But that doesn’t mean Biden is powerless to help Ukraine. An under-appreciated U.S. law gives the president authority to sell at a discount, or even give away, any existing weapons the U.S. military declares excess to its needs.

The law caps annual transfers of so-called “excess defense articles” at a total value of $500 million a year. But the same law doesn’t dictate how much value the president assigns to a particular weapon. He in theory could price an item at zero dollars.

Biden only rarely has used his EDA authority for Ukraine. And where he has used it, lately it’s been a part of complex “ring-trades” where the U.S. government gives excess weapons to third countries—Ecuador and Greece, to name two—then encourages those same countries directly or indirectly to give to Ukraine some of their own surplus weapons.

The United States for instance offered Ecuador ex-U.S. Army UH-60 transport helicopters, freeing up Ecuador to donate to Ukraine its surplus Mi-17 helicopters as well as rocket-launchers and air-defense systems. Greece is getting ex-U.S. Air Force C-130 airlifters and ex-U.S. Army ground vehicles on the understanding the Greeks will try to find surplus weapons to pass onward to the Ukrainians.

There’s no legal reason Biden couldn’t cut out the middleman and use his EDA authority directly to support Ukraine. And there’s no practical reason this aid couldn’t include artillery ammunition.

Generally speaking, most artillery ammunition in U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps stockpiles clearly isn’t excess. Indeed, the Army and Marines need all the modern shells they can get as they prepare for Ukraine-style wars.

But there’s an important exception. There are potentially four million 155-millimeter dual-purpose improved cluster munitions in storage in the United States. M483A1 and M864 DPICM rounds respectively scatter 88 or 72 grenade-size submunitions, each of which can kill or maim a soldier.

All of these shells are obvious candidates for the “excess” label. The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition has up to a 14-percent chance of being a dud.

The Army around 2017 declared a requirement for a new cluster shell with a one-percent dud rate. “Rounds now in the U.S. stockpile do not meet the Office of the Secretary of Defense's goal,” wrote Peter Burke, then the service’s top ammunition manager.

That orphaned, according to a 2004 report, 402 million DPICM submunitions. Do the math. That’s as many as 4.6 million 155-millimeter shells.

The Biden administration managed to ship to Ukraine, under authorities that don’t fall under the EDA law, an undisclosed number of DPICMs—tens of thousands, perhaps—before aid ran out and Republicans blocked additional money.

The White House’s main practice, for the first two years of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, has been to give to Ukraine weapons from U.S. stockpiles—and then immediately to replace the donated materiel with newly-produced weapons.

In that sense, almost nothing Biden has given to Ukraine actually has been free. It has cost the Ukrainians a portion of the $75 billion in financial aid the U.S. Congress approved for Ukraine before Republicans gained their majority.

If Biden abandoned this practice, he could designate all the DPICM shells remaining in U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps warehouses as excess—and donate them to Ukraine without needing a single dollar to replace them.

All four million or so remaining rounds should be available. Enough for years of intensive combat.

Now, there is a caveat in the EDA law. All weapons must be given away “as is, where is.” In other words, the U.S. government legally can’t pay for shipping.

But another caveat is that any weapons in Germany are excluded from this rule. Biden could ship those DPICMs to Germany aboard a few sealift ships and then declare them as excess to need before having the U.S. Army drop them off somewhere the Ukrainian armed forces would have no trouble retrieving them.

Why Biden hasn’t already put in motion this plan is unclear. It’s possible—likely, even—he prefers to hold out for $60 billion in fresh funding, which gives him more options for buying, or even developing from scratch, a wide array of weapons for Ukraine.

But once Biden decides, as many other observers already have decided, that Russia-aligned Republicans never will approve more money for Ukraine, he could lean on his EDA authority—and speed millions of shells to Ukraine’s starving batteries."

 

After stopping all aid to Ukraine, the USA tells it not to harm the aggressor Russia

 From the Washington Post

By David Ignatius, March 29, 2024

 

"Zelensky: ‘We are trying to find some way not to retreat’

 

President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a stark message to Congress in an interview on Thursday as Russian missiles were pounding southern Ukraine: Give us the weapons to stop the Russian attacks, or Ukraine will escalate its counterattacks on Russia’s airfields, energy facilities and other strategic targets.

 

Zelensky spoke in a sandbagged, heavily guarded presidential compound that seemed nearly empty of its old civilian workforce after more than two years of war...

 

The congressional delay in approving a $60 billion military aid package has been costly for Ukraine, Zelensky said...

“If there is no U.S. support, it means that we have no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-milimeter artillery rounds,” he said. “It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.”

To describe the military situation, Zelensky took a sheet of paper and drew a simple diagram of the combat zone. “If you need 8,000 rounds a day to defend the front line, but you only have, for example, 2,000 rounds, you have to do less,” he explained. “How? Of course, to go back. Make the front line shorter. If it breaks, the Russians could go to the big cities.”...

Zelensky summed up the zero-sum reality of this conflict: “If you are not taking steps forward to prepare another counteroffensive, Russia will take them. That’s what we learned in this war: If you don’t do it, Russia will do it.”

When I asked whether Ukraine was running short of interceptors and other air-defense weapons to protect its cities and infrastructure, he responded: “That’s true. I don’t want Russia to know what number of air-defense missiles we have, but basically, you’re right. Without the support of Congress, we will have a big deficit of missiles. This is the problem. We are increasing our own air-defense systems, but it is not enough.”

As Russian drones, missiles and precision bombs break through Ukrainian defenses to attack energy facilities and other essential infrastructure, Zelensky feels he has no choice but to punch back across the border — in the hope of establishing deterrence. An example is Ukraine’s drone strikes against Russian refineries over the past month. I asked Zelensky if U.S. officials had warned against such attacks on energy facilities inside Russia, as has been rumored in Washington.

“The reaction of the U.S. was not positive on this,” he confirmed, but Washington couldn’t limit Ukraine’s deployment of its own home-built weapons. “We used our drones. Nobody can say to us you can’t.”

Zelensky argued that he could check Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid only by making Russia pay a similar price. “If there is no air defense to protect our energy system, and Russians attack it, my question is: Why can’t we answer them? Their society has to learn to live without petrol, without diesel, without electricity. … It’s fair.”...

“When Russia has missiles and we don’t, they attack by missiles: Everything — gas, energy, schools, factories, civilian buildings,” Zelensky said...

The lesson of war for Zelensky, after two years of brutal fighting that has killed many of the best officers and soldiers in the Ukrainian army, is that Putin should have been stopped sooner.

President Barack Obama “was not strong against him” when Putin seized Crimea in 2014, Zelensky said. “Europe wanted to have security on the border and big trade with Russia. That opened the way to war with Ukraine.”

“He captured Crimea, and there was no reaction at all. Nobody pushed him back. Nobody stopped him.” When I asked whether he would have allowed Biden to send U.S. troops into Ukraine to deter the February 2022 invasion, he said simply: “Yes.” In hindsight, that show of force might have been the only way this terrible conflict could have been averted...

“We lost half a year” while Congress bickered, he said. “We can’t waste time anymore. Ukraine can’t be a political issue between the parties.” He said critics of aid for Ukraine didn’t understand the stakes in the war. “If Ukraine falls, Putin will divide the world” into Russia’s friends and enemies, he said.

Zelensky has been the X-factor in this war, mobilizing his country and much of the world to resist Russian aggression. I wish members of Congress who balk at aiding Ukraine could have listened to the Ukrainian leader talk about the price that Ukraine has paid for its defiance — and the risks ahead for the United States if it doesn’t stand with its friends."

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I wish just to remind anyone who reads this that the only reason Ukraine is now being destroyed is that the USA disarmed it, giving a solemn promise to defend it that turned out to be pure lie. I don't know why Americans dislike Ukrainians so much to want them slaughtered.