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Even for a country that has been at war for more than 1,000 days, the past month has been rough for Ukraine: its nemesis, Russia, has acquired 11,000 troops from North Korea and mercenaries from Yemen to assist in its project to delete Ukraine. Russia has also pulverised Ukraine’s energy grid with renewed ferocity as temperatures fall below freezing and fired off experimental intermediate-range weaponry, and it continues to make gains in the east. As if that weren’t enough, Russia’s preferred candidate has been elected as the American president, promising to end the war in “24 hours” – and not in Ukraine’s favour.
And yet after all this, the question I have been asked continuously over the past week is: “Is the west escalating the war?” The question refers to the rescinding of some of the limitations imposed on Ukraine which forbade it from using western missiles to strike inside Russian territory. Far from being escalatory, western policy on the war is in fact best described as incrementalism – a drip-feed release of weaponry, which keeps Ukraine on a lifeline but certainly doesn’t allow it the possibility of pushing Russia out. The reason it has not been given this opportunity is twofold.
First, it would cost a lot more – in defence spending, donations of weaponry, and keeping Ukraine’s economy and society functioning. Wars are expensive. Democratic governments dependent on their electorates are loath to tell them this. As illustrated by the US election, incumbents who are in power when taxes and commodity prices are rising.
The second reason that the western world has not given Ukraine all that it could have brings us back to escalation. No matter how much Russia has escalated, most recently by firing an “experimental” ballistic missile, the US in particular has not wanted to respond. The Biden administration has clearly been infected by Russia’s nuclear threats and updating of its nuclear “doctrine” (despite the fact that dictators don’t bother to consult handbooks for when to use nuclear weapons). This is a live illustration of how nuclear blackmail works.
Consider the drip-feed: before the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Donbas in 2014, the west refused to provide Ukraine with any military assistance or to sanction Russia meaningfully despite its track record of aggression, destabilisation and starting wars elsewhere. In the eight years between that and Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, it provided minuscule amounts of military hardware, and its sanctions on Russia were light. When the invasion began, Germany offered only helmets. Its tanks didn’t arrive until a year later. F-16 fighter jets didn’t start flying until August this year. And UK Storm Shadow missiles could not be fired into Russian territory until last week. Anti-personnel mines have now been approved but have not yet arrived.
Had the equipment been given before the invasion, and the permission to use it appropriately been given just after, Ukraine would surely be in a better position now. One can’t say for certain that Ukraine would have pushed Russia out of its territory. But then equally one can’t say for certain that Russia would have invaded at all if Ukraine had been better armed. What one can say, however, is that it would have been a fairer fight and that fewer Ukrainians would have died – both on the frontline and in major cities.
Their blood is on Russia’s hands first and foremost. But to some extent it is also on ours, as we could have prevented some of it.
Time and again one hears that Ukraine cannot (and in some cases should not) win this war. Certainly Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden have not called for it to do so (preferring instead the more obfuscatory and now unintentionally insulting “We stand with Ukraine as long as it takes”). If Ukraine is not given the tools with a winning objective in mind, it cannot win.
What is needed for Ukraine to stand any chance of continuing as a sovereign and whole state is to stop the drip-feed and learn from professional cycling the concept of “incremental gains” – small changes, none of which alone bring a team victory but which, when deployed together in the right volumes and permutations, do.
These include using Russia’s stranded $300bn in reserves; tightening sanctions (especially against Russia’s shadow fleet transporting oil); sending existing stocks of equipment and munitions (especially air defence systems); investing in European member states’ defence industries with the specific aim of supplying Ukraine; removing any still-existing restrictions on weapons usage for the targeting of Russian troops, supplies, supply lines or infrastructure inside Russia; destroying Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory as is done for Israel; deploying Nato troops in western and central Ukraine to assist with logistics, supplies and training to ease pressure on Ukraine’s own military; and drawing up a membership plan for Nato accession for future security.
There’s one more reason why the west has not done all it could. And that is that we’re talking about Ukraine. Because if this were Portugal or France, we would surely have moved heaven and earth to protect it in full. Ukraine, however, is deemed “not Europe” and is more easily ignored.
There’s only one problem with that (two, if you count the moral vacuousness). Ukraine is the frontline. Moldova, also once part of the Kremlin’s empire, is leaving Russia’s orbit and is surely in danger. Poland and the Baltic states also “antagonise” Russia by existing independently of Moscow’s control.
At what point does the western world decide that enough is enough and realise that this war needs to be fought and won, not managed and lost?
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James Nixey leads the Russia-Eurasia programme at Chatham House
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