West must ensure that Ukraine wins war, says US general
A former commander of the US army in Europe says failure to ensure Putin’s defeat will embolden China’s ambitions in Taiwan.
America must ensure that Ukraine defeats Russia if it is to avoid fighting a war with China, a former commander of the US army in Europe has told The Times.
Lieutentant General Ben Hodges said President Biden’s pledge to back Ukraine for “as long as it takes” was “meaningless” as he challenged western leaders to state clearly what they wanted to achieve and then equip President Zelensky’s forces accordingly.
Biden, Rishi Sunak and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, needed to say “we want Ukraine to win”, he said, adding: “If they did that, this war would be over by the end of the year.” Hodges, 65, who is now retired, said: “Look how fragile the Russians are. The only chance they have is if we lose the desire to support Ukraine.”
The former top US officer in Europe, now a senior adviser to Human Rights First, said President Putin had been emboldened to invade Ukraine by the West’s failure to respond to his 2008 invasion of Georgia, his backing the use of chemical weapons in Syria and his seizure of Crimea and Donbas in 2014.
“This is what failed deterrence looks like. Yes, deterrence is expensive but as we’re seeing now failed deterrence is much more expensive,” he said. “We need to spell out the desired strategic outcome. We need to say we want Ukraine to get all its territory back, to rebuild its economy, bring back thousands of Ukrainian children deported to Russia and get accountability for Russian war crimes.
“If we don’t do that, I don’t think the Chinese will be too impressed with anything we say about Taiwan or the South China Sea. And that will be a much more difficult war, given the geography and the distance involved.”
He stressed that any resolution to the war must include the return of Crimea to Ukraine, a move that France and Germany fear could never be made palatable for Putin.
“If Russia retains Crimea … it will be just a couple of years before they come back,” Hodges said.
“If you look at a map of the Black Sea, you can see Crimea is like a dagger into the belly of Ukraine – with aircraft, the Black Sea fleet, sitting there able to strike anywhere along Ukraine’s southern coastline or deep inside Ukraine.”
As long as Crimea remained in Russian hands, the Ukrainian economy’s reliance on grain and metal exports could always by throttled by the Kremlin. “Russia blocked access to the Azov Sea with the Kerch Bridge, so even if the ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol were liberated, they’re not going to be able to get back into business. Odesa and Mykolaiv are within easy striking distance of Crimea. That means people are not going to invest in them, they won’t be confident their grain will flow unhindered, and it doesn’t flow right now.”
The former general expects Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter- offensive to focus on cutting the Kremlin’s land bridge to Crimea and bringing forward long-range precision weapons like the British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile that can make the peninsula “untenable” for the Russians.
“Ukraine just needs the ability to reach out and hit them. That’s why Storm Shadow is so important.”
The missile could help Ukraine to cut rail supplies over the Kerch bridge from Russia to Crimea, although destroying the structure itself would be difficult.
Hodges led US forces in Europe between 2014 and 2017, setting up a training centre in Yavoriv, western Ukraine and overseeing the instruction of Ukrainian forces learning to fire Javelin anti-tank missiles.
NATO allies had learnt more from the training than the Ukrainians had, he said, arguing the experiences of troops fighting a hybrid war with the Kremlin in the Donbas encouraged the US to alter its own training program.
“This was part of the transition between counterterror operations in Afghanistan to high-end steel on steel conflict. We realised we had to change our training model to include an enemy with the extensive electronic warfare capabilities the Russians had,” he said.
Ukraine’s generals would not be rushed into launching their counteroffensive too soon, Hodges added, despite it having been widely advertised as a spring offensive.
“The number one condition is whether they have enough combat power that’s trained, ready, logistically supported – tanks, mechanised infantry, armoured engineers, air defence and mobile artillery – to penetrate on a narrow front in two or three places all these linear Russian defences,” he said.
Russia’s daunting fortifications in southern Ukraine, including hundreds of miles of trenches, dragon’s teeth tank defences and mines, were “just a nuisance” if Putin’s troops were not prepared to defend it, he said.
“When I look at those trenches, almost all of them are uncovered. I would not want to sit in one of those things once this starts.”
Hodges said that this week’s border incursions by partisans had highlighted deep-rooted problems in both Russian society and command structures.
“Every Russian in Russia is not happy with how this is going. You’ve got [Yevegeny] Prigozhin calling [Sergei] Shoigu and [Valery] Gerasimov the filthiest things possible and even mocking the president,” he said, referring to the head of the Wagner mercenary group, the Russian minister of defence and head of the Russian forces.
“That gives you some sense of the incoherence of the Russian command structure. They have serious internal problems. And if there are problems for the Russians, I’m happy.”
The Times
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