In Ukraine and Europe, a concern: Has Putin outlasted the US?

Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines of the war with Russia were jubilant when HIMARS, the U.S. Army’s coveted multiple rocket launcher, arrived on the battlefield in July 2022.

Not only was the launcher considered light-years ahead of the mostly Soviet-era equipment that the Ukrainians had at their disposal. But perhaps even more important, delivery of the sophisticated American weaponry offered ironclad evidence that the United States would, in President Joe Biden’s words, stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel the Russian aggression.

As recently as last week, a HIMARS rocket attack obliterated a group of elite Russian drone pilots operating in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province.

But these days, the HIMARS is also becoming a symbol of something else.

Amid stalled U.S. assistance, and a trickling supply of arms and ammunition, the launchers are reminders of how the U.S. and some Western partners are tiring of a war Russian President Vladimir Putin launched two years ago next month.

As Congress sits on a $60 billion Ukraine aid package that Mr. Biden first proposed in October, the idling of air defense systems due to a lack of ammunition is increasingly exposing Ukrainian cities to Russian missile strikes. And soldiers are running dangerously low on the ammunition that has enabled them to hold off the Russians.

An exhausted superpower?

For Ukraine, the outlook is increasingly sobering – with some military experts foreseeing rapidly deteriorating battlefield positions and even accelerating territorial losses in coming months.

Moreover, some predict dire consequences if Washington’s abandonment of Ukraine serves to solidify a global perception that the U.S. is an exhausted and divided superpower that no longer stands by its word.

“There’s no question that for at least a year, Putin’s strategy has been to wait out the U.S. and Europe, so if we turn our back on Ukraine now it will be vindication of his thinking that in a conflict, the U.S. and NATO will eventually get tired,” says Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps officer and a senior adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“And it won’t just be Moscow,” he says. “I think the Chinese, too, will conclude that if a war goes long, the U.S. will give up. The lesson for them and probably the Iranians might then be,” he adds, “if they start a war, they will have the advantage of endurance on their side.”

Not everyone agrees with the notion that a U.S. shift on Ukraine from “as long as it takes” to “as long as we could” will have significant global implications.

Rajan Menon, director of grand strategy at Defense Priorities, a realist foreign policy think tank in Washington, says he finds those concerns about China “far-fetched.”

The Chinese, he says, “are going to look at the balance of forces in their region and what the costs will be of launching a war, and less at how long the Americans stuck it out with Ukraine.”

Ukraine hostage to U.S. politics?

Yet virtually everyone from Kyiv and Western European capitals to Washington seems to agree on one thing. A drying up of U.S. military assistance would spell disaster for Ukraine’s aspirations of taking back and reestablishing sovereignty over any more of the nearly 20% of the country that Russia still occupies.

For months, congressional Republicans have tied up President Biden’s request for supplemental Ukraine aid in a battle over spending and toughening security measures at the southern border. A bipartisan solution to the border-Ukraine funding dispute floated by Senate leaders took another blow last week when former President Donald Trump called on his forces not to approve the proposal.

Susan Walsh/AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson exits the White House in Washington, Jan. 17, 2024, following a meeting that President Joe Biden convened to underscore Ukraine's security needs. Mr. Johnson declared last week that a bipartisan solution to a southern border-Ukraine funding dispute floated by Senate leaders would be dead on arrival in the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson declared Friday the plan would be “dead on arrival” in the House.

European political and military leaders – including British Conservatives who hoped to hold some sway with Trump-supporting Republicans – have been knocking on congressional doors in recent weeks with the message that not just Ukraine’s survival but Western Europe’s freedom is on the line.

“Definitely the leadership and the engagement of the U.S. in the long term, but also in this very important phase, is paramount,” says a European official in Washington. “The supplemental [U.S. funding] is a must-have to continue – not only on the ground,” the official adds, “but as a show of Western resolve ... to make [Mr. Putin] understand that he will not win.”

Mr. Menon, who has just returned from his fourth visit to wartime Ukraine, says that for the first time he found “a mood of great pessimism – not over their will or ability to fight this war with Russia, but over how they are now hostage to [U.S.] politics.”

The lack of ammunition is one factor in Ukraine’s shift to what military experts dub an “active defense” – meaning a hunkering down along defensive lines, with aerial attacks (weaponry permitting) aimed at disrupting Russian logistics lines.

But a halt to U.S. aid would mean that deliveries of munitions and weaponry would shrink even further, Colonel Cancian says – with the worst-case scenario being a “collapse” of Ukraine’s fighting capabilities, perhaps even this year.

“The ammunition and artillery delivered in January 2024 is already one-third of what it was in the summer of 2023,” he says. “Without a quick change, that’s going to be down to 8% by June,” he adds. “There’d be a pulling back [from defensive lines], and eventually you’d see a collapse.”

What Europeans are doing

Countering that grim picture is the more hopeful scenario offered by some analysts that Europe is taking steps to at least partially make up for the U.S. shortfall.

Britain, perhaps Ukraine’s most stalwart supporter right now, has pledged additional billions in assistance. France, too, is stepping up, with President Emmanuel Macron recently announcing more air defense missiles and other munitions for Ukraine as he prepares to conclude a bilateral security pact when he visits Kyiv next month.

Still, few analysts foresee Europe making up for the U.S. anytime soon.

“I’ve been arguing for a while now that Europe should prepare to take over the main support for Ukraine ... but the Europeans keep moving really slowly,” says Sven Biscop, director of the Europe in the World program at Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels. “So now we are in a situation where if U.S. military support were to suddenly evaporate, it would create a huge hole in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

And that, Dr. Biscop says, would very likely mean an intensification of fighting, as it would encourage Russia to go on the offensive.

“As we saw from Putin’s recent statements, he still feels he can win,” he says, “but only on the condition of a collapse of [Western] support. So every time the Russians get signals from the U.S. and Europe that our resolve is wavering,” he adds, “Putin feels he’s right – right about us losing interest, and right about his eventual victory in Ukraine.”