The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Aug. 24 marked six months since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine. It was also Ukraine’s Independence Day. Yet instead of celebrating, Kyiv canceled all holiday observances across the country as major cities braced for Russian missile attacks.
“We have to be aware that this week, Russia may try to do something particularly cruel,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned.
Vladimir Putin could use the excuse of the car bomb that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin, as a pretense to strike Kyiv. Russia claims Ukraine carried out the bombing, which Zelenskyy’s government denies. Given the long history of Kremlin political assassinations, the murder is far more likely a Russian “false flag” operation to justify more violence.
It is also a reminder that the West still hasn’t given Ukraine what it needs to stop Russia’s murder of civilians.
Despite sending some new weapons that have enabled Ukraine to hit Russian supply lines, the Biden administration has not supplied the long-range artillery and rockets, warplanes and anti-aircraft systems that would enable Kyiv to mount a serious counteroffensive.
That means Kyiv can’t regain control of its Black Sea coast, on which its economy depends, or the 20 percent of Ukrainian land that Russia now occupies and seeks to annex. Without such weapons, Ukraine faces a long and deadly war of attrition, while Putin waits for the West to tire of supporting Kyiv.
Yet the White House still won’t do the only thing that can prevent an endless war that could get much more deadly: give Ukraine the long-range weapons it needs right now.
On my recent trip to Ukraine, I saw the grim results of Russia’s free hand to kill civilians with rockets and missiles: smashed apartment towers, shattered schools, hospitals and malls, villages with every house destroyed, victims in hospitals and morgues.
The longer this war drags on, the more Putin will be emboldened to pursue his dream of annexing Ukraine and destroying those parts he can’t conquer. It raises the risk the Russians will endanger the Ukrainian nuclear power plants they occupy, as they are doing in Zaporizhzhia.
And delays increase the likelihood that Western support will weaken under pressure of high gas prices — or the growing unwillingness among GOP Trumpists to help Ukraine.
So it is in Biden’s interest to help Ukraine mount a counteroffensive before winter. In southern Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops are itching to push the Russians back to, and ultimately out of, Crimea.
“We are managing the weapons flow (as if) we don’t want the Ukrainians to have a breakthrough,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former NATO commander, told me. “We are not giving them the things they need for a counteroffensive.”
The White House is fearful of giving Ukraine the means to win lest Putin “escalate” his violence. Yet timidity by the Biden administration will convince Putin he can get away with murder — even beyond Ukraine.
“There are no no-risk options,” Breedlove rightly noted. But undermining a Ukrainian counteroffensive is the biggest risk of them all.
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