Support for Ukrainian sovereignty backs big picture on Australia‘s long-term security
Some are calling for Ukraine to settle with Russia by ceding territory, but it must not.
The democracies are dithering over what support to provide and voices calling for a peace settlement that advantages Russian president Vladimir Putin are on the rise. The Ukrainians continue to fight like tigers but, almost four months into the conflict, combat deaths and exhaustion are taking a heavy toll.
What happens over the remainder of this month will define Ukraine’s future. Australia has a compelling interest in the outcome. We face our own authoritarian threat from an aggressive Beijing wanting to dominate Asia. That means we should back Ukraine in the way we will expect to be supported if conflict looms in our own region.
Intense ground fighting is taking place at several locations between Kharkiv city, east of Kyiv, through the Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and south to the coastal city of Mykolaiv. That amounts to a front line of contested territory stretching something like 800km, behind which Russia occupies a fifth of Ukraine in the east and south.
To the east Russia is making slow progress in towns, with heavy street-to-street fighting. Fierce Ukrainian resistance at times regains territory and everywhere is slowing Russian gains.
In the south Ukrainian counteroffensives slowly are pushing Russian forces back.
This is critical ground. If Moscow could push a further 200km to the east it would be at the gates of Odesa, Ukraine’s key port city and export hub, but there is no obvious sign the Russian military has the forces or the will to achieve that objective.
It’s dangerous to generalise about a complex battlefield picture, but the following points can be made with some certainty.
First, this is not a stalemate but a slow-moving and costly war where neither side has the air or ground forces to stage a decisive blow.
Second, where Russia takes ground, it does so by decimating the territory it occupies with long-range artillery and missiles. For all of Putin’s claim that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole”, the reality of Russian military action is that if they can’t control Ukraine, they are happy to destroy it.
Third, the Ukrainians are not giving up. The war is strengthening a sense of Ukrainian nationalism. There are reports of partisan attacks against Russian forces happening in occupied territories. An opinion poll last month in Ukraine reported 82 per cent opposition to making territorial concessions in return for peace.
Fourth, Russian military morale is falling. The Ukrainian General Staff has reported instances where troops of usually high-quality Russian units such as the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division have refused to participate in combat in Luhansk.
While these reports should be treated with caution, at the end of last month the Ukrainian military was assessing 30,000 Russian soldiers killed and twice that number wounded to the point they could not return to the battlefield. British intelligence assessed 15,000 Russian deaths by May 23.
We do not have clarity about Ukrainian casualties, although they will be high. The key point here is that Russia can’t replace casualties with battle-hardened troops. Morale is a key factor limiting Moscow’s capacity to prosecute more ambitious war aims.
A final point that can be made with some certainty is that weapons are flowing from democratic countries in sufficient quantity that Ukraine will be able to keep fighting while improving its capacity to hit Russian forces at longer range.
One example is the US decision to provide M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, a light, wheeled, multiple rocket launcher, along with munitions with a 70km range. This will be a powerful deterrent to shorter-range Russian artillery now pounding Severodonetsk and other cities in Luhansk.
The disappointing news is that Washington is providing only four HIMARS and has not chosen to provide longer-range munitions that can hit targets out to 300km. The Biden administration’s flawed thinking is that withholding these longer-range munitions provides assurance to Russia that it won’t be directly attacked. But with an 800km front, Ukraine desperately needs longer-range weapons to target numerous Russian positions in occupied territory.
The HIMARS story points to underlying confusion in the Biden administration’s approach to Ukraine. Starting from a position of ruling out direct US military support, during April and last month Biden grew more confident about providing Kyiv with larger and more lethal weapons packages, but the US has ruled out providing aircraft or direct air support – two things that would have swung the war decisively in Kyiv’s favour.
After visiting Kyiv in late April, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration’s aim for the war was “to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”. That could be read to mean that Washington is happy to see Ukraine bleed indefinitely, causing Russia harm but unable to end the war on terms favourable to Kyiv.
Other prominent voices are arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should concede territory to Moscow and sue for peace.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Henry Kissinger urged the democracies not to get swept up “in the mood of the moment” by aiming for an embarrassing Russian defeat. Kissinger said Ukraine should be pressed into negotiations with Russia accepting a return to the “status quo ante” before February where Russia occupied parts of the Donbas and Crimea.
The New York Times editorialised on May 19: “A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal.” Stressing that its position “is not appeasement”, the newspaper’s editorial board urged Biden to make clear to Zelensky “that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go to confront Russia”.
Perhaps the biggest risk for Kyiv is that if the conflict settles into a slow-motion struggle in the east and south of the country, some European NATO members and the US will pressure Zelensky to the negotiation table, hoping this will deliver an outcome that allows a lessening of sanctions against Russia.
That would amount to a terrible strategic loss for the democracies. Putin would be rewarded for commissioning horrendous war crimes by keeping annexed territory; European countries could slump back into energy dependence on Moscow; and Russia could rebuild its military for future aggression.
In a world where Ukraine is forced to accept a defeat at the negotiation table after its military has won on the ground, could any small European nation rely on NATO membership to protect their security weighed against Kissinger’s injunction to “remember Russia’s importance to Europe”? In that world could Taiwan reliably look to the US for its security? Could Australia?
Zelensky should be supported in his aim to win control over as much of Ukraine as his forces can claim. He has already made a significant concession to Russia by acknowledging that Ukraine is unlikely ever to be able to join NATO.
Anthony Albanese had been direct in setting out his position. At the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue meeting in Tokyo immediately after the election last month the new Prime Minister said Australia’s view was “that the Russian unilateral, illegal, immoral attack on the people of Ukraine is an outrage … Russia must pay a price for its actions. It’s as simple as that. These actions are against democratic values, against national sovereignty, against the rule of law, against the very charter of the United Nations, and they should be condemned unequivocally.”
He also said: “Australia has, on a bipartisan basis, supported every one of the requests that were made by … Ukraine, including President Zelensky’s request for Bushmasters … And we remain open to any further suggestions of support.”
Australia’s support for Ukraine bolsters the world order on which we rely for our security. While the military campaign is finely balanced, this is a time when Australia should dig deep to provide more support. That should include many more Bushmasters and other vehicles, ammunition, artillery and infantry combat gear. It’s also way past time that our embassy was reopened in Kyiv.
Longer term, Australia will only gain from being a lead advocate of Ukrainian sovereignty, while making concessions to authoritarian bullies only builds a platform for capitulation later.
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The Ukraine war is reaching a pivotal moment. Defeated in its initial aim to take Kyiv and install a puppet leader, Russia is nevertheless making small gains in the east of Ukraine.