The tide has turned decisively against Ukraine, can US help keep it in the fight?

Warsaw: Ukraine’s tired and weary armed forces have had their best week in months, not on the muddy battlefields of the Donbas but in the corridors of power in Washington.

After many rounds of argument and hesitation, the US House of Representatives’ vote to provide $US61 billion ($94 billion) in new military aid for Ukraine this week may be a turning point in the war with Russia. At the very least, it will keep Ukraine in the fight. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Thursday, saying weapons would begin to flow to Ukraine “within hours”.

President Joe Biden wasted no time signing the Ukraine aid package.Credit: AP

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, they can’t come soon enough.

In recent months, the tide has turned decisively against the Ukrainians on the battlefield as they have been forced to conserve artillery and air defence ammunition while Kyiv’s stockpiles dwindled.

Moscow has been firing as many as 10 artillery rounds for every Ukrainian round, and it’s producing more to keep up demand.

“The Russians are going to … three shifts a day 24/7” in their defence industry, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, William LaPlante, said on Wednesday. “Depending on who you believe, they’re at 6 to 7 per cent of their GDP spent on their military; we’re at about 3.2 per cent.”

Away from the front lines, Ukraine’s much-vaunted air defence systems – which at one stage were shooting down about 90 per cent of Russian missiles and drones – have become dramatically less effective, with disastrous consequences for its cities and infrastructure.

The American support would “save thousands and thousands of lives”, Zelensky said this week, adding the bill “keeps history on the right track”.

He expressed hope it should make it possible to “stabilise the situation” and “overtake the initiative”.

“Our warriors on the front lines, as well as our cities and villages suffering from Russian terror, will feel it,” he said. The support would “bring a just end to this war closer, the war that Putin must lose”.

Ukrainian servicemen load Javelin anti-tank missiles onto military trucks. More are set to be delivered under the assistance package approved this week.Credit: AP

The Pentagon, which had ample time to prepare, reportedly had an initial weapons package ready for deployment as soon as the funding was approved.

The initial tranche may be worth as much as $US1 billion and include vehicles, artillery ammunition and air defence ammunition. The New York Times reported the Pentagon said it would include shoulder-fired Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155-millimetre shells, Javelin anti-tank guided missiles and cluster munitions.

Ukraine for the first time began using long-range ballistic missiles provided secretly by the United States, bombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight, American officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday. The US is providing more of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, in the new military package, according to one official who was not authorised to comment and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

Biden said the process should have “been easier, and should have gotten there sooner”, but also: “We rose to the moment … Now we need to move fast, and we are.”

Ukrainian cities have suffered as an ammunition shortage compromised the effectiveness of the nation’s air defence systems.Credit: AP

While US aid was blocked in Congress by Republicans, Ukrainians have quite literally been digging in, creating new fortifications, many thousands of kilometres worth of trench systems, bunkers, and so-called dragon’s teeth – concrete obstacles that help stop the advance of tracked armoured vehicles.

At the same time, Ukraine struggled to maintain eastern territory and in Kyiv’s military circles, the prospect of the front collapsing had not been ruled out.

In February, Ukrainian forces lost Avdiivka, a fortified frontline city in the Donetsk region, due to the lack of artillery shells and air defences to disrupt Russian ground attacks and glide bomb airstrikes. The capture of the city became Russia’s first major gain since conquering Bakhmut in May last year.

Since then, Russia has managed to make gains in and around that area, including capturing the village of Ocheretyne, north-west of Avdiivka. In that advance, Russian forces gained eight kilometres of territory by exploiting a blunder by Ukrainian forces who left part of the front line unguarded during a rotation of troops.

Two Russian soldiers in Avdiivka after Ukraine’s retreat from the town in February.Credit: AP

Kyiv also needs to raise hundreds of thousands of men for its army, but the number of volunteers has dwindled and the government has recently adopted a new law to expand mobilisation, including for those abroad.

A new full-blown Russian offensive is expected “between May and July”, Zelensky has predicted, while General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, said he expected it “in June”.

Olga Tokariuk, a Chatham House Open Society University Network Academy Fellow in the Ukraine Forum, said the unstable model of Western aid had emboldened Russia to escalate the fight – perceiving Western hesitancy as weakness.

She said it was naive to believe that the front line in Ukraine could remain stable without a steady flow of Western military assistance.

Ukrainian soldiers with the 71st Jaeger Brigade fire a M101 howitzer at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.Credit: AP

“Without a better plan for consistent aid delivery, sooner or later Ukraine will again find itself in a critical situation. However, US support should not be overly relied upon. Europe must act, too, using the time Ukraine has bought it to get serious about defence.”

Tokariuk said European countries must follow the significant new commitment from the US by urgently seeking to ramp up domestic ammunition production.

“It must move faster with the delivery of 1 million artillery shells, promised long ago. And it must finally get serious about increasing military spending budgets.”

Announcing a new £500 million ($958 million) weapons package for Ukraine including long-range missiles this week – its biggest package since the February 2022 invasion – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said one of the central lessons of the war was that Europe needed deeper stockpiles of munitions and needed to be able to replenish them more quickly.

Sunak repeated the US assessment that China was supporting Russia’s military in its biggest expansion since the Soviet era, while North Korea and Iran were also significantly contributing to the regeneration of the Kremlin’s military capability.

“Since the Cold War ended, the freedom of our Continent has been based on a simple idea: that it is for people to decide the fate of their countries, not foreign armies,” Sunak said.

“Defending Ukraine against Russia’s brutal ambitions is vital for our security and for all of Europe. If Putin is allowed to succeed in this war of aggression, he will not stop at the Polish border.”

French President Emmanuel Macron also views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an existential threat to the Continent, warning that if Kyiv falls, other capitals could be next.

On Friday, he said Europe must strengthen its role in NATO by lifting spending to at least 2 per cent of GDP on its militaries. It also needed to take more initiative in defining a strategy for its collective defence.

CIA Director William Burns said on Thursday that without the new US package, “there is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024”, or at least put Russian President Vladimir Putin in a position to dictate terms of a political settlement.

But some analysts also fear the new aid might prompt Russia to quickly stage attacks it might otherwise have waited to launch, knowing that action could soon become harder.

“Ultimately, it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare, you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”

with agencies

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.