Wake up, West! Putin can gain upper hand in Ukraine in ‘24 if we do nothing

The European Union just approved membership talks with Kyiv; that’s symbolically important.

But the EU’s postponement of critical military assistance is an alarm bell. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says to prepare for bad news this winter. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz suggests support for Ukraine may be crumbling across Europe.

And there’s faltering confidence in America, as Europeans are beginning to ask whether the strategic interests of the United States end at its border with Mexico.

How did we get here?

We pinned hopes on the summer counteroffensive.

Brave Ukrainians would finally defeat those ill-equipped and poorly led Russian forces.

Then came fall whispers about a stalemate.

It’s suddenly more serious now. Russia is grinding away.

President Vladimir Putin has just reaffirmed his war aim: the destruction of an independent Ukraine. In this next phase, we risk seeing the front line move — in Moscow’s favor.

This would signal the beginning of a moral and strategic disaster. 

On the European side of the ledger, there’s simple arithmetic. 

In a year, Russia uses 10 million rounds of ammunition. 

The CEO of Germany’s Rheinmetall estimates Ukraine needs 1.5 million rounds a year. 

Europe has the capacity to produce 300,000 artillery shells. 

In a ratio of about 1.5 to 10, Ukraine has been holding the front line in miraculous manner.

Putin has his own arithmetic. He thinks he can wait us out.

Moscow has just sent another wave of missiles into Kyiv. Homicide drones are commonplace in any case.

They were all stopped, saving countless lives.

Each missile for Patriot air defense costs $1 million; each drone, a bargain $10,000 to $20,000.

Our fear of escalation led to the fact we never provided the Ukrainians with the tanks, airpower and long-range missiles required to drive Russia’s invading, occupying forces from their soil.

Advantage Putin then.

And now? A war of attrition and a bloodbath.

Putin sends waves of troops to the slaughter.

“He’s adapted — and discovered the endless resource of human flesh,” says analyst Sergei Medvedev.

Ukrainian casualties mount.

US officials estimate more than 70,000 Ukrainians killed — more than the 58,000 Americans lost in the Vietnam War — with another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

NATO official Rob Bauer saw “the bottom of the barrel” already this fall with Ukraine running out of ammunition.

Remember history. In the battle for Stalingrad, Germany’s army ran out of ammunition in 1943, marking a turning point in the war.

The Soviet Union spent tremendous blood without the slightest hesitation.

Putin has a playbook.

We simply can no longer expect Ukraine’s fighting forces to do something we’d never ask our people in uniform to do.

We expected them to take territory that was heavily mined without air support.

We expected a “combined arms” operation, without Ukraine having combined arms.

Kyiv has virtually no navy and no airpower.

Now political pressure mounts inside Ukraine.

Pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky and armed forces chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi have strained their relationship.

The first signs of real fissures in Kyiv are appearing.

A journalist friend in Kyiv says there’s increasing fear of a “third Maidan” — another Ukrainian revolution, ending with an opportunity for Russia’s takeover through a “puppet president.”

We’re hardly there yet.

But the matter has become urgent.

Europeans worried about GOP isolationism should read the report issued recently by a trio of top House Republicans.

Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers and Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner laid out their plan for Ukrainian victory to Republican colleagues in a 28-page memo aimed at convincing members what’s at stake.

For Americans wondering about a detailed military-action plan, the Estonians have just published a remarkable document. 

Their Ministry of Defense offers the first strategy for winning this war — how Ukraine can circumvent Russian defenses and blunt its offensive operations.

It provides exact calculations of how much hardware the West must commit to providing Ukraine, how long it would take given current production rates in Europe, the United States and Russia and effectively what is needed for Ukraine to win.

For all of us: Putin will push like mad between now and the March Russian presidential election.

We must push back.

We cannot allow the front line to move.

Iulia Joja teaches at Georgetown and George Washington University, runs the Middle East Institute’s Black Sea program in Washington, DC, and is co-host of the AEI podcast “Eastern Front.”