It’s been one of the less remarked-upon moments from Tuesday’s jam-packed debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. But one of the most subtly remarkable exchanges came when the topic turned to the war in Ukraine.
Trump was twice asked to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war, and he punted both times — declining to take the side of a U.S. ally against an invading foe, Russia.

That answer is far out of step with the American people and epitomizes a Trump who, as my colleague Philip Bump notes, doesn’t seem to know how to speak, or care to speak, to people outside the right-wing media bubble.

But more than that, it’s just politically puzzling.

To recap, ABC News’s David Muir twice asked Trump whether he wanted Ukraine to win, and Trump talked around it both times.

“I want the war to stop,” Trump deflected the first time. “I want to save lives that are being uselessly — people being killed by the millions.” (Actual estimates place the war dead significantly lower than Trump’s number.)

“I think it’s the U.S.’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done,” Trump said. He said the United States should “negotiate a deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.”

This isn’t entirely new territory for Trump. He offered a similarly noncommittal response last year when asked the same question at a CNN town hall. (When it comes to the war, Trump said that he doesn’t “think in terms of winning and losing.”)

But that was during a Republican presidential primary process in which, it could be argued, supporting Ukraine too openly could have been a liability. Many Republicans — and the most vocal ones — have been staunchly against sending more aid to Ukraine.

When it comes to general-election voters, though, it’s not really even a close call.

An Economist/YouGov poll last month showed that 63 percent of Americans said they sympathized with Ukraine over Russia, while just 3 percent sympathized more with Russia. That’s a 21-to-1 margin.

Another YouGov poll this year asked directly “who do you want to win.” Americans chose Ukraine over Russia, 72-4 — an 18-to-1 margin.

Trump’s comment may align with a significant chunk of Republicans. The former poll showed 37 percent of Republicans said they sympathized more with “neither” side. The latter showed a quarter of Republicans didn’t say they preferred a Ukraine victory (many said they “didn’t know”).

But these are still losing positions even within the GOP. Lots of Republican base voters are skeptical of funding Ukraine’s defense; that doesn’t mean they don’t want Ukraine to win. And indeed, other polling has shown large majorities of Republicans are quite concerned about the threat Russia poses.

To that point, something else about that more recent poll jumped out at me last month. It showed voters didn’t just perceive Trump as being indifferent to Ukraine’s fate; they actually believed he favors Russia, on balance.

In addition to asking people where their own sympathies lie, it asked about where they thought Trump’s, Harris’s and President Joe Biden’s are found.

Americans overwhelmingly said that Harris and Biden favored Ukraine, but nearly twice as many said Trump favored Russia (37 percent) as said he favored Ukraine (21 percent).

We can certainly talk about the reasons Trump won’t say he wants Ukraine to win. He’s long crafted a cozier relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin than many aides and foreign policy experts are comfortable with, and his administration’s steps to get tough with Russia often seemed to come despite Trump. Trump could harbor hard feelings about Ukraine’s role in his first impeachment and the Russia investigation. And if we’re being charitable, perhaps Trump believes that picking sides would make brokering a peace deal more difficult.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that, for whatever reason, a former U.S. president is declining to take the side of a U.S. ally that was invaded by an increasingly antagonistic foe — a foe that an indictment just last week said is continuing to interfere in American elections. And he’s doing so even as this isn’t a close call for the American public.

Trump did plenty to marginalize himself at the debate, and this certainly contributed to that.

Source: The Washington Post

Faced with crisis, Vladimir Putin tends to freeze.
Moscow’s slow, fumbling military response to Ukraine’s surprise occupation of parts of the western Kursk region is the latest example of the Kremlin chief failing to respond with quick, decisive action to match his bellicose rhetoric.

The Kursk incursion is the fourth major blow to Putin’s authority since his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and highlights the weaknesses of a top-down autocracy that operates largely on fear and punishment.
In each case — after Russia’s failure to topple the Ukrainian government at the start of the invasion, after Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin led a rebellion against the regular Russia military command and after Islamist extremists struck the popular Crocus City Hall concert venue — the Kremlin’s response has been halting, with Putin waiting 24 hours or more to offer any public comment.

“It’s always the same style. Putin likes to keep everything secret. When he appears publicly, he doesn’t say much. He prefers not to be alarmist,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of France-based analytical group R.Politik.

Top officials, meanwhile, often dissemble to hide their failures rather than risk displeasing the president. Immediately after Ukraine’s attack on Kursk began earlier this month, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, who personally wields operational command over the war in Ukraine, insisted — falsely — that the Ukrainian assault had been stopped.
During a televised meeting of security officials on Monday, Putin appeared more rattled than usual as he read remarks from a thick notepad of scrawled black handwriting. He also irritably cut off Kursk’s acting governor, Andrei Smirnov, when he dared to openly disclose the scale of the incursion: 28 villages captured and at least 2,000 Russians missing in territory taken by Ukraine.

“Even then, he did his usual thing of more or less saying, ‘Just sort it out,’ and not actually providing any meaningful leadership or strategy for how to do that,” said Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert with the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “Once again, it shows Putin in classic form, hiding from a crisis.”

Putin ordered the officials to drive Ukrainian forces out — then reverted to scheduled meetings, including talks with regional governors and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in the days that followed, without publicly mentioning the crisis. Putin held a regular meeting with his Security Council on Friday to “talk about new technical solutions” for the Ukraine war, before announcing plans to jet off to Azerbaijan as if there was nothing amiss at home.
“This is Putin expecting other people to do all the hard work, and he’ll claim the credit for anything that goes well, and likewise, he’ll blame people for anything that goes badly,” Galeotti said.
Four days after Putin tasked Russia’s military with driving out Ukrainian forces, it was clear that an attack initially seen as a short-term nuisance — a “provocation” in Putin’s words — was increasingly likely to take Russian forces weeks or months to address.

“The Kursk offensive in the last two weeks exposed the Putin regime’s true nature: a system built on lies, indifference, and self-preservation at the expense of its citizens’ lives and safety,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon and opposition figure jailed by Putin for 10 years, in a post Friday on X.
Less than two weeks into the stunning cross-border operation, Kyiv claims to have occupied about 386 square miles, with more than 180,000 Russians ordered to evacuate from their homes. Ukraine has sought to expand the fighting into the adjacent Belgorod region, but progress slowed after Russia deployed reserves and stepped up its resistance.

Gerasimov and the commander of the Akhmat special forces in the region, Apti Alaudinov, have repeatedly asserted that the Ukrainian advance had been halted, and by Friday, the Defense Ministry claimed to have wiped out more than 2,800 Ukrainian soldiers.

But Defense Ministry reports are dismissed as lies even on the Russian side, with nationalist military bloggers expressing outrage at its claims and publishing their own reports confirming Ukrainian advances. Defense Ministry video of supposed Russian attacks on Ukrainians in Kursk turned out to be false, having been filmed in Ukraine earlier in the summer, the Insider discovered.
But the continued damage to Putin’s authority after a catastrophic war and repeated shocks does not translate to an internal threat to his power. Nor is there a risk his regime might collapse in the foreseeable future, according to analysts.
Stanovaya said that many Russians, particularly members of the elite, had come to expect the worst in the war but realized that there was no alternative to Putin in Russia’s repressive political system.

“They are so used to shocking events. They’re so used to living in a very unpredictable situation, so it’s very difficult to surprise them. And they are also used to the feeling that they don’t have the power to affect anything, and they are helpless,” she said.
The crisis, she continued, had certainly undermined Putin’s authority — without necessarily undermining his grip on power.
The Kursk incursion has humiliated Russia’s military and demonstrated Ukraine’s resilience, but has not altered the fundamental situation in a long, grinding war of attrition.
Ukraine is under increasing pressure to negotiate a deal potentially giving up land for peace, after last summer’s failed counteroffensive, problems with personnel, doubts about future Western weapons deliveries, and fears that if Donald Trump becomes president, he will force a peace deal favorable to Russia.

Russia has pounded eastern Ukraine with glide bombs weighing as much as three tons, while Kyiv struggles with deliveries of just enough advanced Western weapons to hang on but not to win. Meanwhile, it is barred from using Western weapons to strike military targets deep inside Russia.
As some of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces gain ground in Kursk, Russia has advanced on the town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, with reports that Ukrainian forces could be forced to abandon the town soon to avoid encirclement.
Putin’s response to the Kursk crisis has been to rule out any new compromise, and he appeared at the meeting Monday to dismiss the prospect of peace talks with Ukraine.

He said Kyiv’s attack seemed designed to improve its position in negotiations, “But what kind of negotiations?” he scoffed. “How do we even talk with people who indiscriminately strike at civilians, at civilian infrastructure and try to create threats to nuclear energy? What can we even talk about with them?”
Stanovaya said Putin has not retreated from the maximalist position he staked out about possible peace talks in June, when he said Ukraine would have to surrender even more territory to Russia and give up joining NATO as a condition for peace.
“When he talked previously about a peace proposal by Russia, it was an ultimatum. It was not a real proposal, and the terms and conditions of these talks are absolutely unacceptable for Ukraine, and he knows it,” she said. Now, she continued, “it will become much harder for him to promote this idea of a peace ultimatum because in the current circumstances you can’t talk about peace.”

Polling by the Levada Center, an independent polling agency, in July indicates that even as Russian state media has trumpeted Russian gains in eastern Ukraine, 58 percent of Russians now support an end to the war, compared with only 34 percent who want to go on fighting.
Those in favor of continuing to fight fell by nine percentage points between June and July, from 43 percent to 34 percent.
“These are the lowest figures for support of the opinion on the need to continue military action over the entire observation period,” the Levada Center said in a statement about the poll. Women, young people, people who had barely enough money for food, and residents of small cities and towns were more likely to support a move to peace talks — about two-thirds of them in each case. But most Russians — 76 percent in the June Levada poll — oppose concessions to Ukraine for peace.
Some pro-Kremlin commentators on state media in recent days have bemoaned propaganda from officials and others claiming Russian supremacy over Ukraine, given the shocking incursion into Kursk.
“We could lose if such blunders continue,” said nationalist commentator Karen Shakhnazarov, a regular fixture on state television talk shows about the war, speaking on Rossiya 1 state television. “This isn’t defeatism. This isn’t scaremongering. It’s just an absolute understanding of the price that we and our motherland will have to pay.”
Russia needs a jolt, such as realizing that defeat is a real possibility, he said, “so that in our heads the situation forms as to what will happen if we lose and what will happen to us.”

Source: The Washington Post

President Biden at the White House on March 11, 2022. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently offered unusually effusive praise of President Biden’s leadership. “I think that Joe Biden is someone who is very clear, who knows exactly what he is doing and who is one of the most experienced politicians in the world, especially when it comes to international politics,” he said in the wake of a Group of Seven meeting that finalized a $50 billion loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets. He added that Biden has “pursued a policy that has led to proper economic development in the country, that has helped to ensure that peace and security are in good hands and that the U.S. is actually playing its role in the world.”

Such praise from a critical ally contrasts with the sneering rhetoric of Republicans. Moreover, it reflects the degree to which Biden has repaired U.S. alliances frayed under his predecessor and forged a united front in support of democracy and European security. The New York Times conceded that the G-7 “was another example of unchallenged American leadership of the West, especially on contentious issues of war and peace.”

Scholz’s comment gave a glimpse into European leaders’ anxiety over the possibility that felon and former president Donald Trump — an avowed isolationist, cheerleader for Vladimir Putin and all-around foreign policy ignoramus — might return to power. Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman told David Rothkopf, writing for the New Republic, “A Trump victory in 2024 would undoubtedly lead to the end of American support for Ukraine.” Without U.S. support, Vindman argued, Ukraine would likely be forced to negotiate away its territory, handing Putin a victory of immense importance. At that point, Georgian, Moldovan and Ukrainian European Union membership would be a dead letter, and the Baltic states would fear for their own territorial integrity.

Biden understands all too well the allies’ panic. On his D-Day travels, he explicitly argued that NATO must resist aggression in order to keep faith with those who gave their lives to free Europe 80 years ago. “There’s nothing new in a modern U.S. president traveling to Europe to invoke the shared history of victory over tyranny,” CNN reported. “But no other commander in chief has done so after his predecessor tried to destroy democracy to stay in office.” The fear of “a return to the chaos Trump inflicted on European allies” remained palpable throughout the visit and thereafter.

The danger to the West posed by Trump makes hawkish Republicans’ genuflecting to Trump all the more galling. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a “victory lap” (with his Senate allies lining up to spoon-feed praise to the New York Times) once the Ukraine aid bill belatedly passed. He told the Times, “Obviously this was a Republican problem. … For most of this time, I sort of felt like I was the only Reagan Republican left.” In light of his professed concern for Ukraine, his hypocrisy in embracing Trump is jaw-dropping.

What precisely does he think will happen if Trump, whom he now backs, is elected again? The “Republican problem” exists because Republicans have dutifully lined up behind a Putin poodle whose return terrifies our democratic allies. Rather than stand up to Trump, as Liz Cheney and others have done, McConnell and some Republican hawks will pocket credit for saving Ukraine while backing the candidate who would surely sign its death warrant.

Furthermore, whatever ills that would befall Europe in a second Trump term would not be confined to Europe. “The Trump administration will challenge European policymakers across a range of issues: from China to trade, climate to the Middle East,” warned a trio of authors from the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Worse, another nightmare lurks beneath the potential foreign policy shocks: an international coalition that could emerge as a framework for populists in Europe to establish special ties with Trump’s Washington.” They added, “Trump’s re-election might well embolden the populist right in Europe to obstruct common EU policies and initiatives more forcefully.”

Weakness among the Western allies on Ukraine would almost certainly be interpreted as a green light for China to expand its influence in the Far East and Africa — and for Russia to double down on its inroads in the Middle East, with increased support for Iran and Syria. Those Republicans who claim to be supportive of Israel should understand a Putin-Trump partnership would embolden Israel’s enemies and Iran’s state-sponsored terrorist groups.

There is little wonder that propaganda from Russian media sounds so similar to what comes from Trump and his MAGA media supplicants. Russia and the Trump campaign have a common goal in preventing Biden’s reelection. The last thing Russians want is four more years of Biden maintaining solidarity in Europe, resisting Russian aggression, and asserting U.S. economic and diplomatic dominance. If the Kremlin had designed him in a Moscow laboratory, it would have been hard-pressed to come up with a patsy as useful as Trump.

American voters should be forewarned. They cannot be in favor of both American “exceptionalism” and Trump; they cannot celebrate our superpower status and then cheer the candidate who would undermine it.

Source: The Washington Post

His remarks shocked leaders on both sides of the Atlantic — and mischaracterized how the 31-member alliance works.

NATO member nations all make payments to cover the operating expenses of the organization, which was founded in the aftermath of World War II to help Western Europe counter the Soviet Union with help from Canada and the United States. But they don’t pay membership fees to remain in the alliance, so there’s no delinquency to speak of.

Countries do, however, commit to spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense each year, with the goal of ensuring the alliance’s military readiness and deterring any potential attacks. The commitment is a guideline, not a requirement, that has been in place for nearly two decades.

Last year, 11 countries met or exceeded that target, according to NATO statistics. The rest spent smaller portions of their GDP on defense. (Iceland, the only member state with no armed forces, is omitted from the data set.)

Iceland, a member state, is omitted because it has no armed forces.
Source: NATO
DEREK HAWKINS AND CHIQUI ESTEBAN / THE WASHINGTON POST

Most of the countries that spent beyond the 2 percent mark either share a border with Russia or sit near the front lines of the Ukraine war. Trump’s insinuation that they’re not paying their share is false.

Poland — which shares part of its northern border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and a long stretch of its southeastern border with Ukraine — spent a greater share of its GDP on defense last year than any other member state, at 3.9 percent.

The United States ranked second, at 3.49 percent. But in raw numbers, the $860 billion U.S. defense budget is more than double that of all other NATO allies combined.

Other member states spending more than 2 percent of their GDP include Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and NATO’s newest member, Finland, which joined the alliance last year. (It’s worth noting that most of the big spenders have national laws or policies that require 2 percent defense spending in accordance with NATO’s goals.)

Countries farther from Russia were more likely to spend below the 2 percent guideline. Some — including Germany, Italy and Canada — spent considerably under that target, despite having large economies and GDPs topping $1 trillion. Others, such as Luxembourg, may struggle to meet the threshold because of the limited size of their militaries and defense industries.

Most NATO allies are spending a greater share of their GDP on defense than they were in 2014. That year, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula and annexed it, inflaming tensions in Eastern Europe and prompting NATO to double down on its 2 percent spending goal.

How countries’ spending in defense has evolved

Changes in percentage of GDP dedicated to defense since 2014, sorted by highest to lowest in 2023.

In blue, countries that dedicated 2% or more of their GDP to defense in 2023. In red, countries that didn’t.
All NATO

* These allies have national laws or political agreements that call for 2% of GDP to be spent on defense annually; consequently, future estimates are expected to change accordingly.

Source: NATO
CHIQUI ESTEBAN / THE WASHINGTON POST

At the time, only three allies were meeting that target. The number increased to seven in 2022. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February of that year, defense spending spiked in several countries.

Poland again topped the list, with its defense spending jumping from 2.4 percent of its GDP to 3.9 percent. In total, Poland spent more than $29 billion on defense last year, nearly $12 billion more than it spent in 2022 and three times what it spent a decade ago. France, Slovakia, Hungary and several others also ratcheted up defense spending after the Russian invasion.

Earlier this year, Turkey voted in favor of Sweden’s membership after months of delay. Pending Hungary’s ratification, Sweden is expected to join NATO this year as the 32nd member, and has committed to spending 2.1 percent of its GDP.

Some member states are spending more but have yet to exceed the 2 percent mark. Others have flatlined. But the pressure to ramp up defense spending hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Following Trump’s remarks, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday pledged to meet NATO’s 2 percent goal. “That is urgently needed,” Scholz said. “Because as harsh as this reality is, we do not live in times of peace.”

Source: The Washington Post

President Biden hosts a meeting at the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Dec. 12. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

Still smarting from last year’s failed counteroffensive in Ukraine, the Biden administration is putting together a new strategy that will de-emphasize winning back territory and focus instead on helping Ukraine fend off new Russian advances while moving toward a long-term goal of strengthening its fighting force and economy.

The emerging plan is a sharp change from last year, when the U.S. and allied militaries rushed training and sophisticated equipment to Kyiv in hopes that it could quickly push back Russian forces occupying eastern and southern Ukraine. That effort foundered, largely on Russia’s heavily fortified minefields and front-line trenches.

“It’s pretty clear that it will be difficult for them to try to mount the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year,” a senior administration official said.

The idea now is to position Ukraine to hold its position on the battlefield for now, but “put them on a different trajectory to be much stronger by the end of 2024 … and get them on a more sustainable path,” said the senior official, one of several who described the internal policymaking on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. planning is part of a multilateral effort by nearly three dozen countries backing Ukraine to pledge long-term security and economic support — both out of necessity, given the disappointing results of last year’s counteroffensive and the conviction that a similar effort this year would likely bring the same outcome, and as a demonstration of enduring resolve to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Each is preparing a document outlining its specific commitments spanning up to a decade in the future. Britain made its 10-year agreement with Ukraine public last week, signed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. It outlined contributions to “Maritime Security, Air, Air Defense, Artillery and Armor” as well as fiscal support and access to its financial sector. France is expected to be next, with an upcoming visit to Ukraine by President Emmanuel Macron.

But the success of the strategy depends almost entirely on the United States, by far Ukraine’s largest donor of money and equipment, and coordinator of the multilateral effort. This spring the administration hopes to release its own 10-year commitment, now being compiled by the State Department with the blessing of the White House — assuming that President Biden’s $61 billion request for supplemental Ukraine funding is approved by a recalcitrant Congress.

The shaky ground on which that assumption currently rests — with House Republicans appearing to dig in ever deeper in refusing the money — has worried both Western allies and Ukraine itself.

“Definitely the leadership and the engagement of the U.S. in the long term, but also in this very important phase, is paramount,” a senior European official said. “The supplemental is a must-have to continue… not only on the ground, but as a show of Western resolve… to make [Putin] understand that he will not win.”

“We wouldn’t survive without U.S. support, it’s a real fact,” Zelensky said in a television interview last week.

Future-proofing Ukraine against Trump

According to U.S. officials, the American document will guarantee support for short-term military operations as well as build a future Ukrainian military force that can deter Russian aggression. It will include specific promises and programs to help protect, reconstitute and expand Ukraine’s industrial and export base, and assist the country with political reforms needed for full integration into Western institutions.

Not incidentally, a U.S. official said, the hope is that the long-term promise — again assuming congressional buy-in — will also “future-proof” aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former president Donald Trump wins his reelection bid.

As the White House continues to try to persuade lawmakers, a second senior administration official emphasized that the strategy doesn’t mean that the Ukrainians are just going to build their own defensive trenches “and sit behind them” all year. “There is still going to be swapping of territory” in small cities and villages with minimal strategic value, “missile launches and drones” from both sides, and Russian “attacks on civilian infrastructure,” this official said.

Rather than the massive artillery duels that dominated much of the fighting in the second half of 2022 and much of 2023, the West’s hope for 2024 is that Ukraine will avoid losing any more territory than the one-fifth of the country now occupied by Russia. Additionally, Western governments want Kyiv to concentrate on tactics where its forces have had greater recent success — longer-distance fires, including with French cruise missiles promised for delivery within the next few months; holding back Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to protect naval transit from Ukraine’s ports; and tying up Russian forces inside Crimea with missile strikes and special operations sabotage.

Zelensky insists that Ukraine remains on the offensive. Plans for 2024 are “not just defense,” he said in a recent video address. “We want our country to retain the initiative, not the enemy.”

But U.S. policymakers who have met recently with him in private say Zelensky has doubts about how ambitious to be in the coming year without clarity about U.S. aid.

“We get asked what’s our plan, but we need to understand what resources we’re going to have,” Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko said. “Right now, everything points to the possibility that we will have less than last year, when we tried to do a counteroffensive and it didn’t work out. … If we will have even less, then it’s clear what the plan will be. It will be defense.”

“Nobody is taking offensive actions out of the equation,” said Serhii Rakhmanin, another member of parliament. “But in general … it’s very hard to imagine a serious, global strategic offensive operation in 2024. Especially if we look at the general state of foreign aid, not just from the U.S.”

Even those who believe that Ukraine could eventually beat back Russia concede that 2024 will be lean and dangerous. “Most probably there are not going to be huge territorial gains,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview. “The only strategy is to get as much as you can to Ukraine to help them first of all to defend their own cities … and second to help them simply not to lose ground.”

“We are a little taken hostage by time,” agreed Kusti Salm, permanent secretary of the Estonian Defense Ministry. “It’s just a question of whether we can walk through this valley of death.”

‘You have to have something to fight with’

Along the front line, the Ukrainian military has started preparing accordingly, aiming to replicate Russia’s layered defenses of trenches and minefields in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region that hampered last year’s counteroffensive.

“Normal soldiers aren’t very interested in [Ukrainian] politics and foreign politics,” said a Ukrainian commander in the eastern Donetsk region, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “But when you feel for yourselves that it’s not enough, like now with ammunition, mortars, shells, that immediately triggers worry. You can fight, but you have to have something to fight with.”

U.S. policymakers say they expect the war will eventually end through negotiations — but also that they don’t think Putin will be serious about talks this year, in part because he holds out hope that Trump will win back the presidency in November and dial back support to Kyiv.

Trump, who has long touted a special relationship with Putin, said months ago that if he is returned to the White House, he “will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.” Zelensky, in last week’s television interview, called that claim “very dangerous” and invited Trump to Kyiv to share whatever plan he might have.

The long-term strategy to transform Ukraine for the future has its roots in a G-7 declaration of support last summer in which Western leaders promised to build a “sustainable” military force interoperable with the West, and to strengthen Ukraine’s “economic stability and resilience.”

Even so, the policy holds risks, including political ones, if Ukrainians begin to blame their government for stagnant front lines. Likewise, in Western capitals, officials are keenly aware that their citizens’ patience with funding Ukraine’s war is not infinite.

Amid the planning, Washington also seems to be readying the argument that, even if Ukraine is not going to regain all of its territory in the near term, it needs significant ongoing assistance to be able to defend itself and become an integral part of the West.

“We can see what Ukraine’s future can and should be, irrespective of exactly where lines are drawn,” Blinken said earlier this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And that’s a future where it stands strongly on its own two feet militarily, economically, democratically.”

‘No silver bullet’ for arming Ukraine

In conversations with lawmakers, administration officials have emphasized that only about half of the requested $61 billion is targeted at the current battlefield, while the rest is directed toward helping Ukraine undergird a secure future without massive Western aid.

The U.S. document, according to U.S. officials closely involved in the planning, is being written with four phases in mind: fight, build, recover and reform.

What is needed most immediately for the “fight” phase is “artillery ammunition, some replacement of vehicles” lost in the counteroffensive, “a lot more drones,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former CIA intelligence analyst and now a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has consulted with administration officials. “A lot of electronic warfare and counter-drone technology — where the Russians have achieved an edge. They need more air defense systems to cover more cities.”

Although Ukraine is still anxiously awaiting the promised delivery of fighter aircraft and more armored vehicles this year, these are “expensive systems with single points of failure,” Ciaramella said. “I think the Ukrainians are realizing there is no silver bullet, having seen a million-dollar tank destroyed by a $10,000 mine” during the counteroffensive.

The “build” phase of the strategy is focused on pledges for Ukraine’s future security force on land, sea and air, so that the Ukrainians “can see what they’re getting from the global community over a 10-year period and … come out of 2024 with a road map to a highly deterrent military,” the first senior administration official said. At the same time, some of the requested supplemental money is targeted at developing Ukraine’s industrial base for weapons production that, along with U.S. and allied increases, can “at least keep pace with Russian” production.

The plan also includes additional air defense to create protective “bubbles” around Ukrainian cities beyond Kyiv and Odessa and to allow key parts of the Ukrainian economy and exports, including steel and agriculture, to recover. Biden last fall named former commerce secretary Penny Pritzker as U.S. envoy to lead an effort to rebuild Ukraine’s economy and mobilize public and private investment.

Enticing foreign investment back into Ukraine will also require additional efforts to stem corruption, U.S. officials acknowledge. Zelensky has taken some steps, including firing and in some cases arresting allegedly corrupt military procurement officials and judges; other initiatives have been demanded by the European Union as it considers eventual E.U. membership for Ukraine.

But as conversations and planning for the future continue, not every Ukraine backer thinks this is the right moment to shift focus away from sending Ukraine what is necessary to confront the Russians as quickly and decisively as possible on the battlefield this year.

“Whatever strategy you use, you need all the weapons you can think of,” former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said during a visit last week to press Republican lawmakers to approve Ukraine funding.

“You cannot win a war by pursuing an incremental step-by-step approach,” he said. “You have to surprise and overwhelm your adversary.”

Source: The Washington Post

(Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post)

Joe Biden, a Democrat, is president of the United States.

Today, the world faces an inflection point, where the choices we make — including in the crises in Europe and the Middle East — will determine the direction of our future for generations to come.

What will our world look like on the other side of these conflicts?

Will we deny Hamas the ability to carry out pure, unadulterated evil? Will Israelis and Palestinians one day live side by side in peace, with two states for two peoples?

Will we hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his aggression, so the people of Ukraine can live free and Europe remains an anchor for global peace and security?

And the overarching question: Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?

Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world.

The United States is the essential nation. We rally allies and partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress toward a brighter, more peaceful future. The world looks to us to solve the problems of our time. That is the duty of leadership, and America will lead. For if we walk away from the challenges of today, the risk of conflict could spread, and the costs to address them will only rise. We will not let that happen.

That conviction is at the root of my approach to supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue to defend their freedom against Putin’s brutal war.

We know from two world wars in the past century that when aggression in Europe goes unanswered, the crisis does not burn itself out. It draws America in directly. That’s why our commitment to Ukraine today is an investment in our own security. It prevents a broader conflict tomorrow.

We are keeping American troops out of this war by supporting the brave Ukrainians defending their freedom and homeland. We are providing them with weapons and economic assistance to stop Putin’s drive for conquest, before the conflict spreads farther.

The United States is not doing this alone. More than 50 nations have joined us to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself. Our partners are shouldering much of the economic responsibility for supporting Ukraine. We have also built a stronger and more united NATO, which enhances our security through the strength of our allies, while making clear that we will defend every inch of NATO territory to deter further Russian aggression. Our allies in Asia are standing with us as well to support Ukraine and hold Putin accountable, because they understand that stability in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific are inherently connected.

We have also seen throughout history how conflicts in the Middle East can unleash consequences around the globe.

We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against the murderous nihilism of Hamas. On Oct. 7, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, including 35 American citizens, in the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. Infants and toddlers, mothers and fathers, grandparents, people with disabilities, even Holocaust survivors were maimed and murdered. Entire families were massacred in their homes. Young people were gunned down at a music festival. Bodies riddled with bullets and burned beyond recognition. And for over a month, the families of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas, including babies and Americans, have been living in hell, anxiously waiting to discover whether their loved ones are alive or dead. At the time of this writing, my team and I are working hour by hour, doing everything we can to get the hostages released.

And while Israelis are still in shock and suffering the trauma of this attack, Hamas has promised that it will relentlessly try to repeat Oct. 7. It has said very clearly that it will not stop.

The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas. I, too, am heartbroken by the images out of Gaza and the deaths of many thousands of civilians, including children. Palestinian children are crying for lost parents. Parents are writing their child’s name on their hand or leg so they can be identified if the worst happens. Palestinian nurses and doctors are trying desperately to save every precious life they possibly can, with little to no resources. Every innocent Palestinian life lost is a tragedy that rips apart families and communities.

Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself.

Just weeks before Oct. 7, I met in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The main subject of that conversation was a set of substantial commitments that would help both Israel and the Palestinian territories better integrate into the broader Middle East. That is also the idea behind the innovative economic corridor that will connect India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, which I announced together with partners at the Group of 20 summit in India in early September. Stronger integration between countries creates predictable markets and draws greater investment. Better regional connection — including physical and economic infrastructure — supports higher employment and more opportunities for young people. That’s what we have been working to realize in the Middle East. It is a future that has no place for Hamas’s violence and hate, and I believe that attempting to destroy the hope for that future is one reason that Hamas instigated this crisis.

This much is clear: A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever.

A two-state solution — two peoples living side by side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity — is where the road to peace must lead. Reaching it will take commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners. That work must start now.

To that end, the United States has proposed basic principles for how to move forward from this crisis, to give the world a foundation on which to build.

To start, Gaza must never again be used as a platform for terrorism. There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory. And after this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza.

As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution. I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.

The international community must commit resources to support the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures, and establish a reconstruction mechanism to sustainably meet Gaza’s long-term needs. And it is imperative that no terrorist threats ever again emanate from Gaza or the West Bank.

If we can agree on these first steps, and take them together, we can begin to imagine a different future. In the months ahead, the United States will redouble our efforts to establish a more peaceful, integrated and prosperous Middle East — a region where a day like Oct. 7 is unthinkable.

In the meantime, we will continue working to prevent this conflict from spreading and escalating further. I ordered two U.S. carrier groups to the region to enhance deterrence. We are going after Hamas and those who finance and facilitate its terrorism, levying multiple rounds of sanctions to degrade Hamas’s financial structure, cutting it off from outside funding and blocking access to new funding channels, including via social media. I have also been clear that the United States will do what is necessary to defend U.S. troops and personnel stationed across the Middle East — and we have responded multiple times to the strikes against us.

I also immediately traveled to Israel — the first American president to do so during wartime — to show solidarity with the Israeli people and reaffirm to the world that the United States has Israel’s back. Israel must defend itself. That is its right. And while in Tel Aviv, I also counseled Israelis against letting their hurt and rage mislead them into making mistakes we ourselves have made in the past.

From the very beginning, my administration has called for respecting international humanitarian law, minimizing the loss of innocent lives and prioritizing the protection of civilians. Following Hamas’s attack on Israel, aid to Gaza was cut off, and food, water and medicine reserves dwindled rapidly. As part of my travel to Israel, I worked closely with the leaders of Israel and Egypt to reach an agreement to restart the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance to Gazans. Within days, trucks with supplies again began to cross the border. Today, nearly 100 aid trucks enter Gaza from Egypt each day, and we continue working to increase the flow of assistance manyfold. I’ve also advocated for humanitarian pauses in the conflict to permit civilians to depart areas of active fighting and to help ensure that aid reaches those in need. Israel took the additional step to create two humanitarian corridors and implement daily four-hour pauses in the fighting in northern Gaza to allow Palestinian civilians to flee to safer areas in the south.

This stands in stark opposition to Hamas’s terrorist strategy: hide among Palestinian civilians. Use children and innocents as human shields. Position terrorist tunnels beneath hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings. Maximize the death and suffering of innocent people — Israeli and Palestinian. If Hamas cared at all for Palestinian lives, it would release all the hostages, give up arms, and surrender the leaders and those responsible for Oct. 7.

As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace. To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.

And here at home, in moments when fear and suspicion, anger and rage run hard, we have to work even harder to hold on to the values that make us who we are. We’re a nation of religious freedom and freedom of expression. We all have a right to debate and disagree and peacefully protest, but without fear of being targeted at schools or workplaces or elsewhere in our communities.

In recent years, too much hate has been given too much oxygen, fueling racism and an alarming rise in antisemitism in America. That has intensified in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. Jewish families worry about being targeted in school, while wearing symbols of their faith on the street or otherwise going about their daily lives. At the same time, too many Muslim Americans, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans, and so many other communities, are outraged and hurting, fearing the resurgence of the Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11.

We can’t stand by when hate rears its head. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate and bias. We must renounce violence and vitriol and see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.

In a moment of so much violence and suffering — in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and so many other places — it can be difficult to imagine that something different is possible. But we must never forget the lesson learned time and again throughout our history: Out of great tragedy and upheaval, enormous progress can come. More hope. More freedom. Less rage. Less grievance. Less war. We must not lose our resolve to pursue those goals, because now is when clear vision, big ideas and political courage are needed most. That is the strategy that my administration will continue to lead — in the Middle East, Europe and around the globe. Every step we take toward that future is progress that makes the world safer and the United States of America more secure.

Source: The Washington Post