Near front line, Ukrainians brace for the impact of US aid cuts
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Howard LaFranchi Staff writer
| Mezhova, Ukraine
Nataliia Karpenko and her husband have farmed the rich soil of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region for nearly four decades, raising a son and a daughter as season upon season they planted and harvested wheat, sunflower, and barley.
Then, last Jan. 7 – Mrs. Karpenko says she will never forget that date – a glide bomb crashed into their town of Novopavlivka, signaling Russia’s advancing offensive out of the territory it occupies to the southeast. Over the following month, bombs and missiles rained down almost daily, as Russian soldiers died in their thousands advancing a few meters a day.
And so in early February the Karpenko family packed up what they could and moved 12 miles north to Mezhova – joining the ranks of Ukraine’s internally displaced.
Why We Wrote This
Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike believe that while the lack of U.S. aid will take months to make itself felt on the battlefield, the impact is likely to be swift, and possibly catastrophic, for civilians.
“We have our wheat already planted, and it’s time to fertilize it,” Mrs. Karpenko says, as she tends to her feisty toddler granddaughter Ania in her new town’s central park. “But for the first time, we can’t go to our fields to do that.”
Mezhova is relatively safe for now, and it bustles with soldiers seeking a brief respite from the frontline 15 miles away – and maybe a grilled hot dog and an energy drink.
But top of mind for soldiers and civilians alike is President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend U.S. military assistance, along with intelligence sharing, to Ukraine.
Civilians at greater risk
The general feeling in Mezhova is that while it could be months before the suspension of military assistance becomes crucial on the battlefield, the impact is likely to be swift – and potentially catastrophic— for Ukraine’s civilian population.
“It’ll take a while before we really feel a cut-off of new vehicles or spare parts to repair damaged ones,” says Volodymyr, a support engineer who works on everything from drones to Humvees. “But … I know that without the intelligence to know what’s coming in and where the enemy units are that are targeting us, we’re going to take more hits.”
Experts also note that without replenished air defense systems, and the intelligence to warn of imminent drone and missile strikes, millions of Ukrainian civilians will be at greater risk.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said Washington had “just about” ended the freeze on intelligence sharing that had been announced the previous Wednesday.
Senior U.S. officials are set to meet Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, reportedly to gauge Kyiv’s readiness for a ceasefire with Russia.
Nightly barrages over the past week could be a grim harbinger of what is to come as Russia exploits Ukraine’s dwindling supply of munitions for U.S.-supplied Patriot air-defense systems. Most of the recent strikes have targeted energy infrastructure, but on Friday missiles struck high-rise residential buildings in the eastern city of Dobropillia, killing at least 14 people.
But beyond the headline-grabbing pauses in weapons deliveries and intelligence sharing, President’s Trump’s return to the White House is having an impact on the Ukraine ground war in other ways as well, military experts say.
Russian forces push for an advantage
The Karpenkos of Dnipropetrovsk are living examples. The farming family found itself in the path of a Russian ground offensive which Moscow appears to have launched in an effort to seize new territory and create a bargaining chip for any ceasefire negotiations. Mr. Trump had pledged to end the war in Ukraine swiftly.
“Trump came in saying his goal was to end the war in Ukraine quickly, disregarding the price and who would have to pay,” says Ihor Romanenko, a retired lieutenant general who is now a military analyst. “The Russians sense this new pressure is moving things in their direction,” he adds, “so they are using this to their advantage in every way they can,” including “on the ground.”
If that is indeed Russia’s aim, the Ukrainian soldiers facing the onslaught say that enemy gains, such as they are, come at great cost.
“We call it ‘the meat grinder,’” says Myroslav, an infantry machine-gun squad commander who asked that his last name be withheld. “The enemy sends over 10 of their guys, we mow down eight, and repeat,” he says as he devours a chicken shawarma at a popular food truck.
“We do everything we can to hold them off,” he adds, “but they just keep throwing more of their guys at us until enough get through to force us to retreat.”
The furniture maker from Ukraine’s western Carpathian mountains says he leaves questions such as the international political significance of military operations to his superiors, so he would not speculate on the strategic purpose of Russia’s offensive into Dnipropetrovsk.
But he has a hypothetical for Mr. Trump.
“Imagine it is you, at home with your family, and your enemy breaks into your house and kills your wife and rapes your daughter,” he says. “You know your friend in the next house has a knife and a gun, but when you plead ‘Give me the weapons so I can defend my house!’ your friend says, ‘I can’t because I want this suffering to stop.’ What would you [Americans] do in our place?”
Some military experts say it is difficult to predict the impact of a long-term pause in U.S. military assistance, because European and other countries have already started providing more weaponry. And Ukraine has ramped up its own defense industry, increasing the production of drones, which now carry out around 70% of the war’s offensive operations.
Replenishing depleted air-defense systems is likely to remain Ukraine’s most serious problem, analysts say.
Soviet-style ambitions?
What remain unchanged, General Romanenko says, are Russia’s short and long-term goals.
“The Russians are aiming for the total destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, which is what we are seeing every day,” he says. Next is “an efficient lowering of the capacities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
But the retired officer, who started his career in the Soviet army, sees the Kremlin’s long term goals as “the disassembly of NATO,” and “to gain back [Russia’s] influence over Eastern Europe – essentially putting the USSR back together.”
For Volodymyr, the software developer who put on hold a promising career to join the army, the war is about more than just territory.
“I have heard Trump say he doesn’t want any more young people to die in this war, but I feel like that is manipulation,” he says, as other soldiers hurry past, along Mezhova’s main street.
He himself recently lost a best friend in the fighting, he says. “I know I could be next, but this is not about me. This is about the freedom of my country’s next generations,” he adds. “It’s about justice and law, and making sure the opposite ideas of the other side do not win.”
Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.
