Ukraine's Resistance

Television news reporting on the war in Ukraine has been a bit short on the details of the fighting. Strategy Page, however, has an extended column on the war in Ukraine, and one part provides some particularly interesting insight into what's going on outside Kyiv.

This is an excerpt from their column dated February 25th:

As expected, not a lot of the nearly 200,000 Russian troops now near the Ukraine borders actually entered Ukraine. All, or most appeared to be volunteers, rather than the one-year conscripts that comprise half the strength of the armed forces. Few of the conscripts and even fewer of their parents are eager for the conscripts to be fighting neighbors.

Russian airborne forces managed to take an airport ten kilometers outside Kyiv. Efforts to use that airport to bring in additional troops were disrupted by the Ukrainian use of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles as well as rifle and machine-gun fire at low flying aircraft.

The airport was quickly attacked by a Ukrainian army rapid reaction force organized and trained for retaking key locations seized by Russian airborne forces.

While the area around the airport was soon surrounded by regular reservists and armed volunteers, the Rapid Reaction unit retook the airport before the Russians could use larger transport aircraft to bring in more troops. [Today's news brings word that the Ukrainians have shot down at least two Russian transport planes, each capable of transporting up to 150 troops].

Russia appears to have underestimated the preparations Ukraine has made since 2014 to deal with this kind of invasion. In addition to 150 local defense units (of at least battalion size [400-800 troops]) arrangements were made to quickly arm, train and deploy volunteers, which includes all physically able males aged 16 to 60.

The regular army obtained more portable anti-aircraft weapons and trained special units to deal with any Russians that seized key objectives. All those armed Ukrainians were more of an obstacle than the Russians expected.

The invaders are using about a dozen main roads from the border to objectives inside Ukraine. Within hours all those roads were under fire from the armed locals. Even convoys with numerous armed escorts were fired on and the Russians did not have enough troops to clear the roads of armed hostiles.

Some convoys were halted by roadblocks, and at least one Russian reconnaissance platoon was captured.

While the Russians control most Ukrainian airspace and coastal waters, land areas remain under Ukrainian control. An amphibious assault on the major Black Sea port of Odessa failed and most ground advances appear to have stalled as well.

The Ukrainian newspaper, The Kyiv Independent, reports that as of February 26th the Russians have lost 3500 soldiers, 102 tanks, 536 armored vehicles, 14 fighter jets, and 8 helicopters.

I don't know how trustworthy those numbers are, but if they're in the ballpark it seems that Vladimir Putin is so far paying a steep price for his decision to invade Ukraine.

Mystifying Policy

As readers of Viewpoint can discern, I'm not a fan of President Biden. Now's not the time to get into the reasons, but I did hope that he would do all he could to make war in Ukraine such an ugly prospect for Vladimir Putin that the Russian president would find some way to save face and back out.

I thought that the best way to do this was to arm the Ukrainians with such an arsenal of defensive weapons that Mr. Putin would count the cost and choose not to invade. I have to say that Mr. Biden has deeply disappointed. However much he equipped the Ukrainian military, and that seems to be a classified secret, his use of sanctions is mystifying.

He has sanctioned several big Russian banks which means that the Russian people, already poor, will be made a bit poorer, but he has declined to sanction Mr. Putin himself, and worse, he has declined to sanction Russia's oil and gas industry.

Even as he's ostensibly trying to cripple Russia's economy we and our NATO allies are still buying Russian fossil fuels! Gas and oil make up 50% of the Russian economy, but Mr. Biden has decided that neither Americans nor Europeans are willing to pay $4.00 or $5.00 a gallon for gasoline in order to help the Ukrainian people.

Of course, had he not turned us from being a net exporter of fuel to being a net importer reliant on Russian petroleum for 10% of our fuel, we'd still be energy independent, as we were under Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden wouldn't be in the ridiculous position of allowing Russia to continue to sell its chief export while also seeking to stifle the Russian economy.

Nor is it clear that the sanctions Mr. Biden unveiled on Thursday will do much to help the Ukrainian people in any case. He admitted as much himself when he said that we'll have to wait a month or so to see if they're working.

The Ukrainian people don't have a month to sit around waiting to see how Mr. Putin's Russia is holding up under Mr. Biden's sanctions. I'm sure they'd like a bit more help this afternoon rather than next month.

I also don't know why, if the sanctions won't bite for a month, they weren't imposed a month ago. Nor is it clear why they were imposed at all if, as Mr. Biden acknowledged, they weren't intended, contra Vice-President Harris, to be a deterrent.

If they weren't a deterrent then they're just punishment, but why not save thousands of lives and do something before Russia launched its invasion to perhaps make them reconsider?

I'm not a military expert nor am I a statesman steeped in international finance, but none of what President Biden has done in Ukraine, just like none of what he did in the Afghanistan pullout, nor what he's doing on our southern border, makes any sense to me.

I don't think it makes any sense to many other people either, least of all the Ukrainians.