 "Biden’s Ukraine aid will not win war, only preserve stalemate")
The excitement of the West and the global media every time NATO, particularly the United States (US), pours more money into the Ukrainian meat grinder is inexplicable. More than two years after Russia launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine, increasing military assistance to the war-ravaged nation in the hope of a dramatic turnaround is insane.
The latest hysteria concerns the $61 billion Ukraine aid Bill signed by President Joe Biden, seen as a sign of the West’s unwavering support for Ukraine. “We rose to the moment. We came together and we got it done,” he said while immediately approving air defence capabilities, artillery rounds, armoured vehicles and other weapons worth $1 billion.
The European Union (EU) and the US have provided military and financial assistance worth $117.3 and $46.2 billion, respectively, to Ukraine since the war started in February 2022.
The EU has provided Ukraine with Starstreak, Patriots, Javelin, Nlaws, Howitzers, HIMARS, M270 MLRS, Storm Shadows/Scalps, IRIS-T, NASAMS, Gepards, Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Bayraktar TB2s.
The American list of sophisticated weaponry and equipment includes Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Bradleys, Strykers, a Patriot defence battery, HIMARS, M1 Abrams, NASAMS, Javelins, Hawks, Phoenix Ghost, Howitzers, HARMs, laser-guided rocket systems, grenade launchers, small arms and radars.
The US has also approved third-party transfers of American weapons from several NATO and EU members. Denmark and the Netherlands have provided Kyiv with US-made F-16s and Ukrainian pilots are training on them in 11 Western countries.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsDespite such a vast Western arsenal and the courage and fighting spirit of Ukrainian troops, Kyiv’s 2023 counteroffensive failed. Russia is in a grinding war of attrition for the long haul and is determined to win it even if it extends beyond 2025. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia can “sustain its assault on Ukraine for another two or three years and maybe even longer”.
Daily barrages of Russian artillery, missiles and drones pummel Ukrainian troops with Kyiv losing its long-held bastion Avdiivka, eastern Donbas, in February.
Now, the slow but steady Russian advance is focused on Chasiv Yar, a town located on high ground. If Russia captures it, Putin’s troops will be closer to the remaining Ukraine-held cities of Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Donbas. Russia is also targeting Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, with artillery and missiles.
CIA director Bill Burns had warned before Congress okayed the military assistance Bill that Ukraine could “lose” the war by year-end with Vladimir Putin dictating the “terms of a political settlement”.
However, the massive American package will unlikely change the war’s course in Ukraine’s favour.
First, the US package doesn’t address Ukraine’s manpower shortage. Kyiv can’t match Moscow’s number of soldiers despite lowering the draft age from 27 to 25. In the third conscription drive, announced on March 31, Putin intends to mobilise 150,000 men.
According to Ukrainian estimates, Russia could add 300,000 soldiers by June. Despite the increasing use of modern technologies in the war, both sides need men to hold captured territories. Ukraine doesn’t have them while Russia has five times more men of military age.
Second, the new package includes the much-sought MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS)—M39A1 Block I or M57 Block IA tactical ballistic missiles (both with a range of 300 km)—by Ukraine and is expected to improve Kyiv’s battlefield position against Moscow’s marauding forces in the east.
After Biden signed the Bill, the Pentagon revealed that the US had secretly delivered the M39 Block I (165-km range) ATACMS to Ukraine earlier this month. Subsequently, Ukraine used the missiles to strike a military base in Crimea and Russian forces east of Berdyansk, near the Sea of Azov.
Zelensky has been demanding the longer-range ATACMS for long to strike the 19-km-long Kerch Bridge, which connects southern Russia to occupied Crimea and is a crucial supply line for its forces in southern Ukraine. After striking the bridge twice, Ukraine is reportedly plotting to hit it the third time.
Meanwhile, Russia has implemented several defensive measures, like smoke generators and underwater barriers against aerial and underwater drones, enhanced its air defence systems and operates electronic warfare to protect the bridge.
Even if Ukraine destroys the bridge using the ATACMS, Russia can continue to supply its forces via the new 700-km railway line connecting the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to Donetsk and Mariupol. If the railway line is also targeted, it can always be repaired faster than the bridge.
It is doubtful that the new ATACMS (M39AI or M57) will be decisive in turning the war’s tide. Ukraine already has British-French air-launched Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missiles with a range of 550 km and a single warhead of 450 kg. While the M39 has a warhead of 591 kg, it comprises bomblets. The M39A1 has a long range but again has a warhead comprising bomblets and weighs 174 kg. The M57, too, has the same range but a single warhead of 214 kg, almost half that of the Storm Shadow.
The ATACMS can reach a speed of Mach 3 during its dive phase, making it difficult for Russian missile interceptors to take it down. The Storm Shadow has a maximum speed of Mach 0.95 and can be intercepted by most air defence systems.
On the other hand, the ATACMS is fired from mobile HIMARS and M270 MLRS mobile artillery rocket systems, which can be targeted by Russian cruise and ballistic missiles and warplanes. For example, a 9K720 Iskander SRBM destroyed a Patriot launcher outside of Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, in March. While a Storm Shadow is launched from a jet, an Su-24 in Ukraine’s case, which can manoeuvre if targeted.
When the Storm Shadow was delivered to Ukraine, the media was gripped with hope and excitement, similar to those of the ATACMS.
Ukraine used Storm Shadows to hit industrial sites in Luhansk, kill the 35th Combined Arms Army’s Chief of Staff Major General Sergey Goryachev in Zaporizhzhia, strike the Chonhar road bridge (connecting Crimea with Kherson), damage the Chongar Strait railway bridge (linking Crimea with Kherson), target the Sevastopol Port and hit the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.
However, the missiles have neither significantly impacted nor changed the war’s trajectory—they are useful but not decisive.
Third, Ukraine can’t match the number of long-range missiles in the Russian inventory and the increased production rate. Russia has launched around 8,000 missiles against Ukraine since the war started.
According to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) deputy head Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, Russia produces about 115-130 missiles with a range of, at least, 350 km and 100-115 shorter-range missiles every month. Besides, 40 Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles (2,000 km-5,500 km range) and 30 Iskanders are manufactured monthly.
Iranian and North Korean missiles have boosted the Russian stock. Iran has provided around 400 Fateh-110 family of surface-to-surface, road-mobile ballistic missiles, which have a 300 km-700 km range, to Russia. North Korea supplied several dozen SRBMs, which could be the road-mobile Hwasong-11A (KN-23) or the Hwasong-11B (KN-24) SRBMs.
Fourth, Ukrainian air defence systems, which initially shot down 90 per cent of Russian missiles and drones, have been overwhelmed by the volume of attacks. For example, around 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles were fired at Ukraine in March alone.
Ukraine has only three to five Patriots, which fail to counter the Russian onslaught despite shooting down 15 Russian air-launched hypersonic ballistic missile Kinzhal, according to the Ukrainian military.
Volodymyr Zelensky has requested NATO for 25 Patriot road-mobile SAM/anti-ballistic missile defence systems with 7 urgently as Russia continues to destroy Ukraine’s cities and their infrastructure. Of the six EU members that operate the Patriot, only Germany is willing to deliver one battery with the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain saying no.
However, deploying more batteries of the $1 billion Patriot system will not help Ukraine gain the upper hand. Russia’s changed tactics include a swarm of drones followed by subsonic cruise and hypersonic ballistic missiles that overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems.
On December 29 last year, Russia fired 122 cruise and ballistic missiles and 36 drones at Dnipro, Kharkiv, Konotop, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia in the largest attack since the invasion, killing 58 people. On January 2, Russia targeted Kyiv and Kharkiv with more than 130 missiles and drones.
In the second biggest attack of the year, on January 7-8, Russia launched 59 drones and missiles and Ukraine could shoot down less than 50 per cent of them. Seven S-300/400 SAMs, six Iskanders, eight Iranian Shahed-136s/131s, four Kinzhals from Mig-31, two Kh-31Ps, eight Kh-22s from Tu-22 and 6 Kh-101/555/55 from Tu-95 were launched.
Using Patriot missiles, each costing millions, to counter such salvos is too costly and unsustainable.
Fifth, artillery is playing a vital role in the war, like in other conflicts, causing 80 per cent of casualties on both sides. Russia fires 10 times more artillery rounds than Ukraine, which is conserving the rounds, as Republican hawks in the House of Representatives delayed the aid Bill.
Ukraine’s massive shortage of artillery rounds has helped the Russian infantry advance gradually along the 1,000-km frontline. Moreover, Ukraine has only around 350 artillery pieces while Russia has 4,000.
The West can’t compete with Russia in producing artillery rounds, especially the 155mm. Russia produces around three million rounds annually compared to the US and Europe, which manufacture only about 1.2 million munitions. Russia has also signed production contracts with Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Syria. Even if the Congress had okayed the $61 billion assistance on time, the West wouldn’t have been able to ramp up the production of artillery rounds on the Russian scale.
Sixth, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the first full-scale drone war with increasing use of armed UAVs.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces fired by Zelensky in February after the failed counteroffensive, had stressed the importance and utility of drones in the war.
“It is well known by now that a central driver of this war is the development of unmanned weapons systems,” he wrote hours before he was sacked. “Crucially, it is these unmanned systems—such as drones—along with other types of advanced weapons, that provide the best way for Ukraine to avoid being drawn into a positional war, where we do not possess the advantage.”
Zaluzhnyi’s successor, Oleksandr Syrskyi, has also highlighted the importance of UAVs and prioritised drone development to find “asymmetric solutions to gain a qualitative advantage over a numerically superior opponent”.
Zelensky created the Unmanned Systems Force, a separate branch of the Ukrainian Armed Forces devoted to drones, in February.
Ukraine has been using drones with great success, like the attacks on the Black Sea Fleet and the destruction of tanks. According to NATO, 66 per cent of Russian tanks destroyed in recent months were hit by cheap but precise first-person-view (FPV) drones.
Ukraine aims to produce more than a million drones this year with around 200 companies manufacturing UAVs. Besides, a coalition of 10 Ukrainian allies, including Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Latvia, aim to deliver another one million drones by February 24, 2025.
However, Ukraine can’t win the war or stop the incessant Russian attacks with drones, which can’t compensate for the shortage of artillery rounds, missiles and fighter jets.
“We produce a lot of drones, but they are not an alternative to any kind of weapon,” Zelenskyy said during an interview this month adding that they aren’t a “substitute for air defence, long-range weapons, missiles and long-range artillery”.
On the other hand, Russia too is using drones and has launched 4,630 UAV attacks since the war began. Besides FPVs, Orion, Eleron-3, Orlan-10 and Lancet, Moscow has used the Iranian kamikaze Shaheds with devastating effects.
Russia has also increased drone production and manufactures around 1,000 FPVs a day. Moscow has also purchased, at least, 6,000 Shahed-136s from Tehran, and a joint venture in Tatarstan, 805 km east of Moscow, will produce 6,000 Shahed-136 prototypes (renamed the Geran-2 by Russia) by mid-2025.
Russian FPVs, especially the inexpensive $500 Ghoul quadcopters, have destroyed 5 of the 31 Abrams, which cost around $10 million each, forcing Ukraine to withdraw the tanks from the frontline.
The new American aid and any future assistance, including by NATO, will not tilt the scales in Ukraine’s favour. At best, Ukraine can stabilise the frontline by using new weapons supplied by the US. Does the West and Ukraine have a theory of victory or do they expect a sudden Russian collapse? More military assistance for Ukraine will only preserve, not break, the stalemate.
Ukraine cannot inflict the kind of casualty caused by Russia, which is taking few risks with its soldiers and instead using more missiles, rockets, drones, and artillery to hit civilian and military infrastructure. The West should realise that it can’t sustain Russia’s war of attrition and strike peace with Putin soon.
The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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