Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan
Beyond the sincere expressions of Ukrainian gratitude and firm pledges of ongoing American support, President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden came together Wednesday with specific, and sometimes differing, goals for their meeting.
With a $47 billion U.S. aid package requested by Biden for 2023, both were keen to solidify support from the new, Republican-led House that takes over next month. It was important, a senior administration official said, for Zelensky to use his considerable in-person charisma in making the case to lawmakers “about how this really is a struggle for democracy.”
For Zelensky himself, the objective centered on appeals for more powerful weapons to enhance Ukraine’s ability to launch major offensives against entrenched Russian forces in the coming year. There was little indication that he succeeded, at least in the short term.
In a tweet labeled “My Christmas Wishlist,” posted earlier this month before this week’s announcement of another $1.85 billion worth of U.S. security assistance, Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak’s top five items included four that the Biden administration has declined to offer or help provide — including advanced battle tanks and long-range missiles. The fifth, the Patriot air-defense system, was included in the new aid package.
U.S. defense officials have said that Ukraine has enough tanks already, and that the U.S. M1 Abrams sought by Kyiv are too difficult to maintain and complex to operate. When asked at a joint news conference with Zelensky about the missiles, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike targets inside Russian territory, Biden warned such weaponry could shatter NATO unity in support of Ukraine.
“They’re not looking to go to war with Russia,” he said of the alliance.
For its part, the administration was eager “to discuss [Zelensky’s] thinking about diplomacy. Where he is, and what he needs to make sure that Kyiv is in the strongest possible position so that we can accelerate the emergence of a negotiating table,” said a senior administration official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the historic visit.
The official reiterated the long-standing administration position that “it’s not for us to describe what diplomacy should look like, when it should begin, or what its red lines should be,” decisions that are for Ukraine to make.
But just because there’s unanimity in pushing back Moscow doesn’t mean that Washington and Kyiv are walking in lockstep.
“It was an opportunity for Biden and Zelensky to have a serious conversation about where are we going ... not to tell [Zelensky] what to do ... to make sure we’re aligned in overall objectives and understanding each other,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Biden remains worried about not pushing too far, too fast, for fear of escalation. Zelensky wants to make clear that he needs this continued support that, frankly, only the United States can provide.”
There are three different models of what a negotiated end to the war could look like, each of which has adherents within the administration. One, part of a peace plan Zelensky proposed last month, includes Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory it currently occupies, including Crimea and areas of eastern Donbas it seized in 2014. Another is withdrawal to the 2014 lines. A third level of withdrawal would include Donbas, but not Crimea.
The latter two options Zelensky has made clear he will not support, noting that peace can only come when the Russian invaders have retreated from all occupied territory.
But in their face-to-face meeting on Wednesday, Biden sought Zelensky’s “current thoughts about what that should look like,” the senior official said, while acknowledging that “it’s sort of an academic discussion at this point,” since there are no indications that Russia is interested in talking.
“What the Russians want is a cease-fire, with time to refresh, regroup and train new forces,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Russia is trying to buy time” following its poor showing against Ukrainian counteroffensives that regained significant territory in the fall.
At Russia’s Defense Ministry end-of-the-year meeting Wednesday, both President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced new initiatives that were an indirect acknowledgment of prior failings. Shoigu proposed increasing the size of the armed forces from 1 million this year to 1.5 million, deploying 20 new divisions and changing the mobilization structure.
Putin said he approved of the changes, but noted problems in combat operations that needed “to be addressed specially,” including communications, command and control, and counter-battery warfare, according to Russia’s Tass news agency. He instructed Shoigu to provide Russian troops, many of whom have been ill-equipped, with weapons, medical kits, rations and footwear “at the most advanced and highest level,” Tass reported, because “there can be no trifles on the battlefield.”
“We have no financing constraints and the country and the government give all that the Army requests,” Putin said. “I hope that the response will be formulated accordingly and the corresponding results will be achieved.”
While Ukraine’s top military leaders have said they expect renewed Russian offensives, perhaps even against Kyiv, within the next few months, a senior State Department official said the United States believes the Kremlin is conflicted, with some Russian officials eager to capture more territory and others concerned about whether their forces are prepared to undertake major military operations.
“Certainly there are some who I think would want to pursue offensives in Ukraine,” this official said. “There are others who have real questions about the capacity for Russia to actually do that.”
Russia is facing “very significant shortages of ammunition,” which is “increasingly a problem” for Kremlin forces.
But while there may be some internal haggling over tactics, U.S. officials said, there has been no dissension detected within the Kremlin when it comes to strategy, or indication of serious proposals that the Russians should cut their losses, withdraw and pursue peace.
New U.S. and allied-supplied weapons systems, particularly the sophisticated Patriot air defense, will aid in confronting ongoing Russian airstrikes targeting Ukrainian infrastructure that have left much of the country in the dark and without heat as winter sets in. The goal, senior U.S. defense officials said, is to provide a “layered” defense against strikes by Russian cruise missiles and drones.
“This isn’t a comprehensive air defense solution for Ukraine,” one defense official said of the newly approved Patriot system. “This is another step in many steps that we have pursued. ... With this one [Patriot] battery, we will be offering a formidable capability, but the United States and allies will still be working to round out Ukraine’s air defense.”
But some senior Ukrainian officials maintain that the only way to stop the Russian air assault is to hit it where it originates. That means “combined strikes against the stationary targets of the enemy, first against the airfields of the base of the Russian strike aircraft, and the areas of the launch positions of ballistic and cruise missiles,” Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, deputy chairman of Ukraine’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, wrote this week in an article for Ukrinform, the state news agency.
To do that, he wrote, Ukraine needs long-range missiles, specifically the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS — which appeared on the wish list of Podolyak, the Zelensky adviser.
The other items on his list — Leopard and Marder battle tanks from Germany, and M1 Abrams tanks from the United States — are equally unlikely in the short term.
Germany repeated Wednesday its reluctance to provide tanks until the United States does so first. While it is a German priority to “support Ukraine as much as we can,” government spokesperson Steffan Hebestreit told reporters Wednesday in Berlin, “the other is to keep NATO out of direct conflict with Russia. The third is that Germany will not go it alone. The fact is that no main battle tank of Western provenance has been delivered to Ukraine to date.”
Even without immediate success on the weapons front, the stakes for the Ukrainian president’s visit have been high. “Zelensky is trying to strengthen and thereby extend the political foundations of support for Ukraine in the United States and by extension the whole free world,” said Daniel Fried, who served as a top State Department diplomat for Europe and U.S. ambassador to Poland. “That all depends on the Americans staying the course, and he wants to put a human face on it.”
For now, that goal appears to have been achieved. “What may be different” in the new Congress “is that there will be loud voices, not particularly influential voices, but loud voices, that will make the case that this money needs to be directed elsewhere, that we’re wasting precious resources on overseas adventures,” the senior administration official said.
But “our honest expectation is that we will continue to see strong bipartisan support for Ukraine. We expect to see it in the next Congress.”
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