Ukraine's Offensive Could Be Make-or-break Moment for Western Military Aid

As the world awaits the start of the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, concerns are being raised that continued military and economic support for the Zelensky government from the West could well be dependent upon the extent of its battlefield successes this spring and summer.

"The stated policy is: we are in this with Ukraine as long as it takes," former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and current Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center head John Herbst told Newsweek. "But then on background, unnamed officials will speculate about how, 'well gee, we might not be able to sustain this level of support politically if Ukraine does not mount a successful counteroffensive.'"

Herbst fears that it is this type of indecisive messaging, rather than any fundamental flaw in the policy aim of arming Ukraine, which has allowed the question of continuing U.S. support to become a matter of controversy.

"The people raising this possibility don't seem to be advocating the idea that our support ought to be contingent on Ukrainian battlefield success," he said. "Instead, they're lamenting what they seem to see as a potential domestic political development that they would like to avoid. It's really a problem of the administration's own making."

But Herbst argues that Western support of the Ukraine war effort will continue to flow regardless of how much territorial progress it makes in the coming months.

"Even in the unlikely event that the Ukrainians do not prove able to liberate significant swathes of territory this year using the support they've already received, that still would not do anything to change the strategic reality that a Ukrainian victory is in the national interest of the United States and its partners," former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and current Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center head John Herbst told Newsweek.

"The Biden administration understands that a Russian victory in this war would be a disaster," Herbst added. "That's why we're spending $55 billion a year, along with all sorts of other types of assistance, including sanctions against Russia."

Still, challenges to the continuation of U.S. support for the Ukrainian war effort have occurred frequently enough that they have begun to feed into a narrative that certain officials might actually be opposed to the continuation of aid. During a May 2 press conference by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a journalist from Russia's RIA Novosti agency asked a question that began with the phrase, "we know that you don't support the current unlimited and uncontrolled supplies of weaponry and aid to Ukraine..."

McCarthy responded with a definitive and full-throated statement of support of Ukraine.

"I vote for aid for Ukraine; I support aid for Ukraine," he said. "I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine."

It is the kind of forceful message that Herbst would like to see communicated more often, especially in response to the narrative that international aid for Ukraine has been "unlimited" or "uncontrolled," as the RIA Novosti questioner suggested. Herbst argues that the biggest problem with U.S. support for Ukraine is that it has not been substantial enough.

"If the Biden administration were not so timid in sending more advanced weapons," he said, "then the odds of a major Ukrainian battlefield success this spring and summer would have been higher than they currently are."

"But the administration has been intimidated by Putin's nuclear threats," he added, "which have delayed the delivery of some of the systems that Ukraine would need in order to essentially guarantee a counteroffensive that liberates large swathes of territory by the end of this year."

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Department of State for comment but did not receive a reply prior to publication.

Herbst's assessment points to the effectiveness of Moscow's narratives, a view that is shared by George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War, who has been tracking the Kremlin's nuclear rhetoric since the first Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2014.

"When Russia initially occupied Crimea and invaded the Donbas," Barros told Newsweek, "I was working on the Hill, and there were lobbyists who would camp outside of the Capitol South metro station to target all of the Congressional staffers as they were headed to their offices."

"The protesters had a big banner that said something along the lines of, 'We Have to Avoid Global Thermonuclear War With Russia,'" he said. "That was the rhetoric even back when the debate was over whether we should be implementing economic sanctions and sending Ukraine Javelins."

According to Barros, the Kremlin's campaign of fear produced real results back then, and it continues to do so today.

"It worked well enough that we didn't even send the Javelins at that point," he explained. "And since February 24, 2022, the narrative around any new kind of support for Ukraine, from Javelins to Stingers to HIMARS to main battle tanks and F-16s, has been the same: 'we can't cross Vladimir Putin's red line.'"

Barros argues that this "red line" argument has largely been successful.

"The problem with that narrative is that the Russian nuclear rhetoric has proven to be a bluff," he said. "It's bizarre that we haven't yet figured this out."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment but did not receive a reply prior to publication.

Instead of hunkering down for a potential nuclear exchange, Russia appears to be setting the necessary conditions to continue fighting a grinding conventional war in Ukraine until one side or the other ultimately collapses.

Barros points to Russian military reforms that show it is abandoning the lighter, rapid reaction force model of the early 2000s, which many observers believe was an attempt to copy the success of the Desert Storm forces in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1990. Russia employed that model in their February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In its place, they are reverting to a tried but true older model, one that "more closely resembles the Red Army of the Soviet period," he said.

"We already saw in November and December that they had stopped just taking newly mobilized guys and sending them to the front to plug holes," he added. "Instead, they started taking more time to do recruitment and training, to build something that is starting to resemble an operational reserve. That's an inflection, and it's consistent with a Russian effort to generate forces that will be better capable of fighting an extended conflict."

Given the Russian leadership's apparent will to continue the fight against Ukraine regardless of cost, and Ukrainian society's will to keep up its defensive efforts no matter how many of the Western weapons systems on its wish list remain lacking, the most plausible prospect for a quick end to the conflict involves a scenario in which Ukraine's upcoming counteroffensive proves so successful that it causes a collapse of the Russian military.

But Herbst remains hopeful for a positive outcome of Ukraine's coming counteroffensive.

"I believe it's likely that, even with our less than stalwart support, we will see a notable Ukrainian success this year, even if those gains are not enough to bring about a decisive end to the war," he said.