Republicans are complaining that neither U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could tell them how Ukraine might win the war with Russia or what plan the administration had for Ukraine going forward.
Nor were the Republicans happy that no progress was made with the administration on their demand for strong Mexican border security. So far the result is that the measure in question is stalled in both houses of Congress. Legislation won’t be taken up again until after the Christmas and New Year’s break, if then.
The Biden administration’s Ukraine problem, however, goes deeper than just funding. Legislators now understand that the war cannot be won and are wondering whether the administration hasn’t gotten itself in a trap by supporting Zelensky.
In a nutshell, supporting Zelensky in a no-win scenario seems a bad idea to many.
No serious military leader has advanced the thesis that Ukraine can win against Russia, despite assurances given for months by Kiev and the administration that it could. Lawmakers who listened to these arguments for the past two years now realize that the administration duped them.
The defining moment happened over this past summer when the Ukrainian offensive, heavily supported with U.S. arms and U.S. and NATO training not to mention massive intelligence support, yielded huge losses and only a few tiny, reversible victories.
Zelensky was still running around in the U.S. claiming that Ukraine had won many victories in the offensive and had broken through the Surovikin defense line put up by the Russians. These days that argument is no longer credible, if it ever was.
There is big turbulence ahead. The Pentagon has dispatched Lieutenant-General Antonio Aguto Jr to Ukraine. His job will be shadow commander of Ukraine’s army, basically replacing the current commander. That will put Aguto over land army commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
His instructions are contradictory. On the one hand, he is supposed to direct the Ukrainians on a “hold and build” strategy. On the other he is to tell Zelensky to freeze the conflict, at the latest by this coming spring.
“Hold” means not to try to advance but to hold on to territories under Ukraine’s control. This idea is already undermined by the fact that the Russians are advancing across most of the line of contact.
They have already entered Marinka, a small city in Donetsk that was under Ukrainian control. The Russians are also progressing around Avdiivka, and control parts of the city, with more to follow.
Around Bakhmut, the Russians are in the process of taking back some villages that the Ukrainians grabbed during the big battles over Bakhmut. It looks as if they will soon get them back and threaten Chasiv Yar, a key Ukrainian logistics hub.
Similarly in the Zaphorize front the Russians are now pressuring Robotyne, a small village in the so-called Bradley Square area that the Ukrainians actually took in their offensive when they tried to push toward the actual Surovikin defenses. Whether Russia will be successful here depends on how many lives the Ukrainians want to spend holding on to a small village of no strategic significance.
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