US deliberately gave Ukraine weapons to “bleed” rather than win, says ex-CIA chief

He blames Washington’s fear of Russian nuclear escalation for holding back decisive aid.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine could have been stopped early if the US and its allies had provided Ukraine with the necessary weapons from the start . Instead, as former CIA director Ralph Goff told The Times , a deliberate strategy was employed to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needed to fight — but not enough to defeat Putin’s army.

“If we had provided the Ukrainians with the proper weapons at the time, they could have pushed the Russians out of the country. That didn’t happen. It set the stage for this longer, more drawn-out, more exhausting war that we’re witnessing today,” Goff said.

He said President Biden and his allies allowed Putin to dictate the terms of the conflict and were nervous about sending Ukraine the equipment it needed at the right time because of fears that the Russian leader would use nuclear weapons if he was close to defeat.

“[They] let Vladimir Putin and his nuclear weapons racket fool them. So they gave the Ukrainians these weapons, but they never gave them enough to win. They only gave them enough to bleed,” he said.

At the same time, Goff noted that Putin had a “real mortal fear of Covid” during the pandemic, and “in my opinion, people who are so concerned about their health are not going to play high-stakes nuclear poker.”

Now he thinks Trump’s strategy may be to soften the talk and perhaps flatter Putin to distract him from China. Putin, meanwhile, thinks that as a former intelligence officer he can manipulate Trump, although Goff predicts that he will ultimately “go horribly wrong.”

“Ultimately, Putin will show what the problem is, and the problem is in Moscow, not in Kyiv,” Goff explained.

At the same time, if a peace agreement is not reached soon, Goff said that, according to one Ukrainian official, by the end of the summer, the entire front line will essentially become a “death zone” 20-50 km long, “where it is impossible to move because there are so many drones in the air and robots, sensors and mines on the ground.”

Weapons for Ukraine

This week it became known that the Trump administration for the first time approved the sale of weapons to Ukraine worth $50 million.

Experts note that despite the fact that the amount is insignificant, the news itself about the first approval by the United States of arms sales to Ukraine since the beginning of Trump’s presidency is positive.

It also later became known that the US State Department approved the sale of training and technical support for F-16 aircraft , as well as related equipment worth $310.5 million to Ukraine.

(C)UNIAN 2025