White House Worries Russia’s Momentum Is Changing
Trajectory of Ukraine War
Multiple factors are helping Russia’s military
advance, including a delay in American weaponry and Moscow’s technological
innovations on the battlefield.
David E.
SangerJulian E. BarnesKim Barker
By David E.
Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Kim Barker
Reporting
from Washington
May 14,
2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/russia-momentum-ukraine-war.html
Just 18
months ago, White House and Pentagon officials debated whether Russia’s forces
in Ukraine might collapse and be pushed out of the country entirely.
Now, after
months of slow Russian ground advances and technological leaps in countering
American-provided arms, the Biden administration is increasingly concerned that
President Vladimir V. Putin is gathering enough momentum to change the
trajectory of the war, and perhaps reverse his once-bleak prospects.
In recent
days, Moscow’s troops have opened a new push near the country’s second-biggest
city, Kharkiv, forcing Ukraine to divert its already thinned-out troops to
defend an area that it took back from Russian forces in a stunning victory in
the fall of 2022.
Artillery
and drones provided by the United States and NATO have been taken out by
Russian electronic warfare techniques, which came to the battlefield late but
have proven surprisingly effective. And a monthslong debate in Washington about
whether to send Ukraine a $61 billion package of arms and ammunition created an
opening that Russia has clearly exploited, even though Congress ultimately
passed the legislation.
In
interviews, American officials express confidence that many of these Russian
gains are reversible once the spigot of new arms is fully opened, most likely
sometime in July, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine finds ways to
bring more — and younger — troops to the front lines. But they are hesitant to
offer predictions of where the battle lines may stand even a few months from
now, or whether Mr. Zelensky will be able to mount his long-delayed
counteroffensive next year, after one last spring fizzled.
American
and allied officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of
anonymity, in order to discuss intelligence reports and sensitive battlefield
assessments. But some of the concerns have spilled out in public comments.
Secretary
of State Antony J. Blinken said with some understatement on Sunday that
“there’s no doubt there’s been a cost” to the long delays in sending arms. He
insisted, in his appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” that “we’re doing
everything we can to rush this assistance out there.” But American officials
say President Biden continues to reject the suggestion from President Emmanuel
Macron of France that deployment of Western troops in Ukraine may be necessary,
an assessment that Mr. Macron’s office said recently he “stands by absolutely.”
In private,
some of President Biden’s aides worry that just as the United States has
learned key lessons from the war — about technologies that work and those that
do not — so has Mr. Putin. And their biggest concern is that as Russia replaces
weaponry wiped out in the first 27 months of the war, Mr. Putin may be
regaining ground just as Mr. Biden prepares to meet his closest allies at a
Group of 7 meeting in Italy next month. It is unclear whether Mr. Biden will be
able to repeat the claim he made in Finland last summer, that Mr. Putin “has
already lost that war.”
Some
veterans of dealing with Mr. Putin’s serial confrontations are unsurprised at
this turn in events.
“Russia
oftentimes starts its wars poorly and finishes strong,” Stephen J. Hadley, the
national security adviser under President George W. Bush, said at a Harvard
conference on Friday. Now, he said, Russia has “brought its mass” — a far
larger population to draw troops from, and a “huge military infrastructure” —
to mount a comeback.
As Mr.
Hadley suggested, there is no single reason for Moscow’s battlefield advantage.
Instead, multiple factors are helping Russia’s military advance.
Because of
the delay in U.S. funding, Russia has been able to achieve a huge artillery
advantage over Ukraine. The lack of air defense ammunition has also allowed
Russia to use its air power with more impunity, attacking Ukrainian lines with
glide bombs. With more air defense ammunition, Ukraine would be able to force
those planes farther back, making it more difficult for Russia to attack from
the air.
The delay
in American supplies has been matched by a similarly long delay by Ukraine in
approving a mobilization law to bring more, and younger, soldiers into its
military. Ukraine is suffering acute shortages of soldiers, and is struggling
to provide adequate training to those it brings into the military.
But all
those Russian advantages will not last indefinitely, and Russian forces are
likely to make a push this summer, said Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“In 2024,
the Russian military enjoys a material advantage, and the strategic initiative,
though it may not prove decisive,” Mr. Kofman said. “This year represents a
window of opportunity for Russia. But if the Russian military is not able to
turn these advantages into battlefield gains and generate momentum, there’s a
fair chance that this window will begin to close as we enter 2025.”
Whether it
is temporary or not, Russia’s new momentum is most evident in Kharkiv, scene of
one of the biggest tank battles of World War II. In 2022, it was at the center
of fighting in the first year of the war, with the city coming under artillery
fire from advancing Russian troops.
In a
surprise counteroffensive that fall, Ukrainian troops fought off the drive to
the city, then pushed Russian forces out of the region, reclaiming a huge swath
of land. The Russian humiliation, there and in the southern city Kherson, was
so extensive that it led to one of the biggest fears of that period in the
conflict: that the Russians would make use of a battlefield nuclear weapon
against the Ukrainian troops as a last resort.
Since then,
Ukraine has been able to use that recaptured territory near Kharkiv to conduct
harassing attacks into Russia. Those attacks have prompted the Russians to
retake land in recent weeks to create a buffer zone that Mr. Putin has said
will make cross-border attacks harder for Ukraine to carry out. Recently, the
head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has called the Russian advance
near Kharkiv “critical.”
Some
outside experts caution that Russia’s real strategic aim in taking territory
around Kharkiv is to force Ukraine’s troops to move to reinforce the city,
weakening the front lines elsewhere. That could set up an opportunity for
another Russian drive in June, in the Donbas, the part of eastern Ukraine that
the Kremlin has illegally annexed and is trying to capture.
“The
Russian offensive aim is likely to draw Ukrainian reserves and elite units,
then pin them in Kharkiv, thereby weakening the rest of the front,” Mr. Kofman
said. “The primary Russian objective still remains recapturing the rest of the
Donbas.”
Whether
they are able to do so may depend in part on how successful Mr. Zelensky is in
his effort to find new troops to relieve a weary, often demoralized force. He
has moved the age of Ukrainians subject to the draft to 25 from 27, despite
considerable resistance within the Ukrainian public.
The United
States is also trying to bolster technical advice to Kyiv, hoping to counter
Russian technological advances. In some cases, Russia has successfully deceived
GPS receivers, throwing off the targeting of Ukrainian arms, including a
variety of missiles shot from HIMARS launchers, which Mr. Biden began providing
to Ukraine last year.
Those
launchers are scarce, but the Russians have grown more successful in tracing
their movements, and in some cases destroying them even when they are well
camouflaged.
These
battlefield advantages are ephemeral, of course, and the war may look as
different 18 months from now as it does from 18 months ago. But there is a
growing sense inside the Biden administration that the next few months could
prove critical, because at some moment the two sides may finally move to a
negotiated cease-fire, an armistice similar to the one that ended the active
fighting in Korea in 1953 — or simply a frozen conflict.
David E.
Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a
Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on
challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger
Julian E.
Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters
for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
More about Julian E. Barnes
Kim Barker
is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about national issues. More about Kim Barker
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