Timing is everything: Why West is giving Ukraine heavier weapons now

The Bradley armored vehicles at the U.S. Army’s Grafenwoehr garrison in Germany wave no banners declaring the significance of their imminent dispatch to Ukraine and entry into battle there in the nearly year-old Russian war.

They don’t have to. As one of the Army’s most effective armored fighting vehicles, the Bradley trumpets the next step in a monthslong shift in Western support for Ukraine’s war effort.

After warily providing defensive assistance for much of the war, the United States and NATO are signing on to Ukraine’s increasingly bold efforts to go on the offensive against Russia’s entrenched forces in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The supply of the Bradleys – along with Germany’s commitment to provide Marder fighting vehicles and France’s to send its AMX-10 armored vehicles – underscores a new high-water mark in the West’s shift on the conflict from caution to deepening involvement.

Further evidence of the shift comes from the imminent arrival in the United States of around 100 Ukrainian soldiers for training on the Patriot air defense system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Until recently, the U.S. had limited any training of Ukrainians on U.S. weapons systems to Europe and was reluctant to send Patriots to Ukraine – over concerns the advanced anti-missile system and training of Ukrainians on U.S. soil would be seen as escalatory by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Over recent months such concerns have fallen away. Still, some national security analysts say the West’s all-in stance is both overdue and modest compared with what Ukraine needs to sustain gains now – especially since Mr. Putin appears to have concluded that time is on his side.

West’s message: “We’re all in now”

The U.S. and its NATO partners “started out from a very cautious position, but they have spent the year saying, ‘We’re a little more in,’ and then again, ‘We’re a little more in,’” says Matthew Schmidt, a political scientist with expertise in Russia and Ukraine at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

“What they’re saying this time is ‘We’re all in now,’” he adds. “They can’t let Ukraine lose.”

What explains the Western change of heart, and its openness to helping Ukraine consolidate its recent advances on the battlefield and press on farther?

For some, the new willingness to provide more powerful weaponry – and in particular materiel designed for offensive operations – signals how the U.S. and European partners have been convinced that Ukraine now has Russia on the defensive – and can do much more with the right equipment.

“This is the right time for Ukraine to take advantage of its capabilities to change the dynamic on the battlefield,” said Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant defense secretary for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, at a Pentagon briefing last week. Announcing more than $3 billion in new assistance that includes 50 Bradleys, she added, “We are positioning Ukraine to be able to move forward and retake territory.”

Even more, and heavier, help may be coming, in the form of tanks that are far superior to Ukraine’s outdated Soviet-era models. Poland is proposing to send some of its German Leopards to Ukraine, while the United Kingdom is said to be readying the dispatch of perhaps a dozen Challenger tanks.

Time is not on Ukraine’s side

Yet for others, the upbeat assessment of the Ukraine military’s abilities and its prospects for doing even more with the right assistance also comes with a warning: Helping Ukraine do more now makes sense because time is indeed not on Ukraine’s side.

No matter how deflated Mr. Putin’s Russia might seem on the cusp of the war’s first anniversary next month, these observers say, a conflict that sits stalemated and drags on for years is not in Ukraine’s interests – and if anything is likely to favor eventually the larger and more powerful belligerent.

Even now, Russia is working hard to symbolically seize the initiative again in the east, with a fierce battle, and conflicting claims Friday, over the small mining town of Soledar, near Bakhmut.

“I would wish a total victory for Ukraine, but that is unlikely and doesn’t become more possible the longer the fighting continues. In fact, a long-drawn-out conflict would likely be worse,” says Sven Biscop, director of the Europe in the World Program at Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels.

“The thinking at NATO is Russia is unlikely to win,” he adds, “but it’s equally unlikely Ukraine can liberate all its territory. So, best to help Ukraine make its advances and consolidate positions now” while momentum and Western support remain strong.

The argument that time is on Russia’s side was starkly laid out for Washington this week by Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state and national security adviser, and Robert Gates, the former defense secretary and director of the CIA. In a commentary Sunday in The Washington Post, the national security veterans and Putin savants warn Western allies not to underestimate President Putin’s staying power and his “messianic” commitment to taking Ukraine, no matter the cost or time it takes.

“We are convinced he believes time is on his side, that he can wear down the Ukrainians and that U.S. and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and fracture,” they argue. “The only way to avoid such a scenario,” they add, “is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability” to enable the Ukrainian military to push back entrenched Russian forces now.   

They call the U.S. dispatch of Bradleys a “good start,” but insufficient.

Is West’s support sustainable?

A key reason that New Haven’s Dr. Schmidt concurs is the precarious state of Ukraine’s economy after a year of war. The Ukrainian people have proved to be impressively resilient, but he says a collapsed economy will eventually wear down both Ukraine and its Western donors.

“It’s absolutely right that the longer-term prospects are not as bright for Ukraine,” he says. He notes that the economy has contracted by 30% since the war began while the “burn rate” through the West’s support is $5 billion to $6 billion a month. “That’s simply not sustainable.”

And all of this is music to Mr. Putin’s ears, he says. “Putin is cognizant of these conditions,” he adds, “and he’s concluded that if he digs in and prevents [the Ukrainians] from winning outright, he can win in the long term.”

At the same time, Dr. Biscop of the Egmont Institute in Brussels says that to a certain degree, the Russian leader has himself to blame for Europe and NATO’s unabating resolve to assist Ukraine.

It’s not just that Mr. Putin brought war back to a Europe that has worked so hard to ensure war would never again be fought on European soil, but more the brutal and shockingly inhuman manner in which he’s conducting his war.

“The sheer brutality of the war and the way the Russians use war crimes systematically as part of their way of waging war, that shocks and motivates us,” he says.

Europe’s “initial reaction was to be cautious,” he adds, “but Russia has consistently gone so far in its persecution of Ukrainians that the initial reasons to be careful no longer apply.”