How to Hurt Ukraine the Most: Keep Pushing to Find Putin’s Red Lines

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Vladimir Putin on Monday claimed that NATO’s increasing military support for Ukraine risks escalating the conflict, pushing Russia “to the red line” across which, he said, “we can no longer retreat.”

If the intent of Biden’s permission to use American long-range weapons against Russia was to help Ukraine, to their pain, the Ukrainians will likely discover the opposite turns out to be true.

The war is already lost, and nothing NATO or Kyiv can do now will prevent that outcome.

Continuing to send billions in eleventh-hour support to Ukraine, as Biden and others in Europe are doing, will serve only to deplete further our own arsenals of weapons and key ammunition categories (like interceptor missiles), and increase the cost of the eventual loss to the Ukrainians.

We Need to Admit the Obvious on Ukraine

There are many reasons to acknowledge the futility of continuing to fight, and they are significant.

First, in the nine months prior to the June 2023 Ukrainian offensive, the cumulative West gave Ukraine every military advantage possible: thousands of tanks and other military vehicles, millions of rounds of ammunition, missiles and drones, intelligence support, and training tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.

Despite all of this, the Ukrainian offensive was a total disaster, failing even to penetrate the first of five Russian defensive lines fully.

Secondly, since January of this year, Russia has been on the offensive, and has not suffered a single setback.

Especially since June, they continue increasing the number of square kilometers of Ukrainian territory each month, with November representing the greatest gains for Russia since the opening round in 2022.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia launched four times as many drones, rockets, and missiles at Ukraine from September-November than the same months the previous year.

Third, the manpower ratios are decisively in Russia’s favor. Ukraine is already has insufficient numbers of troops to even hold what it has, and impossible to ever retake lost territory. To compound that problem, they have also reportedly suffered 100,000 desertions; a staggering number. Some villages in the strategically critical Pokrovsk region have been recently taken by Russia without a shot being fired – because Ukraine didn’t have enough troops to even contest the advance. Russia is now just two miles from the gates of Pokrovsk.

Troopers with 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division firing the 25mm canon on a Bradley fighting vehicle in order to zero the vehicles weapons systems at a range in Poland. Ranges such as these familiarize troopers with the vehicles systems in order to ensure combat readiness.

Russia Isn’t Giving Up and Keeps Pushing Hard

Russia, meanwhile, continues to recruit – not forced to mobilize – reportedly 30,000 men per month. Their military industrial base is producing all the key tools of war and ammunition, to include thousands of drones and missiles, to complete the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, if a diplomatic settlement is not found.

Diplomatically, Trump won the 2024 presidential election on the promise that he will end the war and America’s support for Ukraine. He repeated on Monday that he will seek a diplomatic solution as soon as he takes office on January 20th.

The Ukraine War Needs to End

Given those military and diplomatic realities, there is no rational hope that Ukraine can achieve any positive outcomes on the battlefield. The most rational and logical course of action Kyiv and Washington can now pursue is to seek a negotiated settlement of the war at the earliest possible moment. Doing so would preserve as much territory as possible for Kyiv and end the pointless loss of life of the Ukrainian soldiers, dying in large numbers every day in pointless battles.

Russian Tank Under Attack in Ukraine. Image Credit – Twitter Screenshot

Yet, as I discussed with Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago on yesterday’s Deep Dive show, there remain many in Ukraine, the U.S., and Europe that refuse to acknowledge on-the-ground truth and continue to advocate for policies that will likely increase the losses of the Ukrainian side while not providing any rational hope for success.