Now that the US is insisting that Ukraine capitulate to Russia, it is up to Europe to prevent Moscow from achieving its goals of conquering Ukraine and destroying European unity.
April 13, 2025, 12:57 pm
The war in Ukraine has stalled. After Ukraine recaptured Kherson in the south in late 2022, the front has moved only marginally. Since Trump supports Putin, Ukraine can no longer count on the United States. Instead, Europe and other willing coalition partners need to compensate for the US mistakes and make it possible to Ukraine to win.
Essentially, three elements are needed. First of all, the West needs to provide Ukraine with air supremacy or a no-fly zone over Ukraine and deliver the best of its modern arms to Ukraine. Second, the West needs to double its financial support to Ukraine. Third, the only swift way of doing so is to seize the $300 billion of frozen Russian Central Bank assets in the West.
The reason why Ukraine has not made more headway in its defensive war against Russia weighs heavily on Ukraine’s Western supporters. The European Union was slow to provide aid in 2022, while the United States started well but delayed its support with half a year in 2024 because of opposition from republicans in Congress.
The United States provided early and substantial military assistance and excellent intelligence, but its military advice was partially flawed. In particular, it insisted on a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, which failed spectacularly.
The US would never have fought a war without first establishing air supremacy, but the Biden administration refused to offer Ukraine that because it was afraid of provoking a nuclear war or World War III, about which National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan talked obsessively. Second, the US had announced this counteroffensive for months, so the Russians were well prepared and had established the deep Surovikin defense line with many kilometers of fortifications and mines. This was a perfect example of what not to do, and it cost many fine Ukrainian soldiers their lives.
Instead, Ukraine needs to thrive on its advantages. This is no longer a World War I trench war, because no trench can shield a soldier from an explosive drone, while many drones can be diverted electronically. Until recently, Ukraine’s soldiers fought either with old Soviet arms or old Western arms, but this war is likely to be won with superior arms, just as Israel has won its wars. Ukraine has both Western and its own arms that are superior to Russian arms. It needs European financing for its own arms production in hundreds of startups.
In August 2024, the Ukrainian forces successfully surprised the Russians in the Kursk region. The Kursk operation might show the road forward. Take the war to Russia and Ukraine benefits from excellent intelligence and great military flexibility. After having developed its own long-distance drones, Ukraine has systematically bombed even distant military targets, which weakens Russia’s military capability.
It is not true that Ukraine has too few soldiers. Ukraine has Europe’s largest army of some 900,000 soldiers, while Russia uses about 650,000 soldiers in its war against Ukraine. An attacking power is supposed to have three times more troops than the defender, so Russia has too few soldiers and has gained nearly no new land in Ukraine. Russia has probably lost 200,000 soldiers killed and 600,000 injured. The USSR could only take 15,000 dead soldiers in Afghanistan during a decade. When will the Russian people realize that Putin’s war in Ukraine is sheer madness?
Russia’s GDP is almost 10 times larger than Ukraine’s, but that is not very relevant. The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan in spite of vastly larger GDP. Russia’s problem is that it is pursuing an unjustified imperialist war of aggression in Ukraine, and hardly any such war has been victorious after World War II. Putin pursues his war of choice to repress the Russian people, while the Ukrainian nation fights a righteous existential war.
In each of 2023 and 2024, Ukraine received roughly $100 billion in Western financial support and it is set to receive a similar amount this year. Its domestic military budget is $57 billion (28% of GDP) and Western support takes Ukrainian military expenditures to about $100 billion, half of GDP. Russian military expenditures are barely $200 billion or 10% of GDP. Yet, both officially and privately Russians complain about their large military expenditures. Ukrainians, remarkably do not complain, because they know why they are fighting.
Ukraine and Europe need a breakthrough in the war. If Ukraine receives $100 billion more this year, Ukraine could probably win the war. Given the suffering of the Ukrainians and that President Trump could not care less about Ukraine, time is short. Europe should deliver that money now.
Fortunately, Europe already holds some $200 billion of identified and frozen Russian Central Bank reserves in the Euroclear Bank in Belgium. The European Union should seize these funds and deliver them to Ukraine as a legitimate countermeasure, as the prominent lawyers Phillip Zelikow and Robert Zoellick have argued. Incomprehensively, France and Germany have opposed this. Do they want Russia to win the war? Apparently, they want compensation for companies the Russian government is confiscating. Is that really their priority? They had better start thinking! Germany can and should take the lead with its new Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
If Ukraine does not win its war of defense against Russia, the blood will be on the hands of the German and French governments.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/50602
Europe needs to cut the yapping and start delivering some action. They had enough time to come up with a thousand ways to help Ukraine, yet they are still in the dithering stage. They are totally pathetic.
A very fair and accurate summary of events.
I would take issue on some items though.
Ukraine needs twice the amount of troops it has now. The reasons are obvious:
They need to take back and hold what they have lost. The trumputler “peace plan”; aka surrender plan, is a crock of shit and ain’t going nowhere.
They need to replace lost fighters.
They need to rest the ones they have with much greater frequency.
I don’t believe putler has only 650,000 occupier orcs. The Ukrainians put it much higher. Also there is another 160,000 horde of vermin on its way. To put that number in context, it’s greater in size than any other European army except Poland.
Finally, Ukraine can’t do it alone. The allies must send at least 6 divisions and they must establish a NFZ.
Quite frankly, the Europeans are children who have been nurtured by the US for much too long. They still can’t get their crap together, are still not fully united, and still have no concrete plans. I’m afraid that they would even discuss and bicker with each other while their own troops are fighting in Poland or the Baltics or wherever.