Ukraine’s brave and brilliant response to Russia’s attack is rightly being celebrated across the world. But it might be obscuring a growing danger. While the assault on Kyiv and the surrounding region has failed, Moscow’s strategy in the south and east of Ukraine could well succeed. If it does, Russia will have turned Ukraine into an economically crippled rump state, landlocked and threatened on three sides by Russian military power, always vulnerable to another incursion from Moscow. It will take much more military assistance from the West to ensure that this catastrophic outcome does not come to pass.
As Can Kasapoglu, a military scholar and strategist, presciently pointed out in the first few weeks of the war in an essay for the Hudson Institute, there are two distinct wars taking place in Ukraine, one in the north and one in the south, and the latter has been “radically more successful” for Moscow. Russia has been able to move forces and supplies out of its bases in Crimea and capture the cities of Melitopol and Kherson. Mariupol is now encircled and invaded by Russian troops, and Ukrainian forces trapped there cannot be resupplied. Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov has been blocked, and, Kasapoglu points out, Russian forces have a contiguous land corridor from Crimea deep into Donbas. They are also trying to move west, from Kherson to Odessa.
Odessa is the prize. As the main port from which Ukraine trades with the world, it is the most important city for Ukraine economically. It is also a city replete with symbolic significance. It was here in 1905 that a mutiny on the battleship Potemkin (made famous by Sergei Eisenstein’s movie) marked the beginning of the troubles of czarist Russia. Were Odessa to fall, Ukraine would be practically landlocked, and the Black Sea would essentially become a Russian lake — which would almost certainly tempt Moscow to extend its military power into Moldova, which has its own breakaway region filled with many Russian speakers (Transnistria). Russian President Vladimir Putin could present this outcome as a grand victory, liberating Russian speakers, gaining crucial cities and ports, and turning Ukraine into a nonviable vassal state.
This must not happen, and the Ukrainians are fighting ferociously to prevent it. In Ukraine’s east, the Russians are trying to advance from Kherson, through the city of Mykolaiv, but they are being stymied by the extraordinary courage of the city’s inhabitants, who have reportedly blown up the bridge that connects the city to Odessa and blocked the railway tracks. This week, Ukrainian forces claimed they were able to deploy their never-before-used Neptune missiles and sink the Russian missile cruiser Moskva. Still, it’s important to remember that, before the invasion, Russia had a 10-to-1 advantage in defense spending over Ukraine — and Putin seems determined to press on, no matter the costs.
What can the United States and the West do? Much more of everything they are already doing. Ukraine needs more arms, especially those that give it massive asymmetric fighting power. Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who has been farsighted in diagnosing Russia’s weaknesses and Ukraine’s strengths, explained to me that Ukraine needs more equipment that allows it to maneuver quickly around Russia’s rigid forces. That means helicopters, armed Humvees, multiple-launch rocket systems and drones of every kind. Turkish drones have proved to be an amazingly effective weapon in this conflict. Hertling urges that Ukraine be given more of those, as well as American “kamikaze” drones and intelligence drones.
The Russian navy, which has been massing in the Black Sea, continues to pose a great danger to Odessa, threatening either to lay siege to it or to launch an amphibious landing behind Ukrainian lines. Despite the purported success of the Neptune missiles, Ukraine does not have the capacity to stop the Russian navy. NATO should consider doing something similar to what it did during the Balkan wars in the 1990s. It should enforce an embargo around those waters, preventing Russian troops from entering to attack Ukraine’s cities or resupply Russian forces. NATO ships would operate from international waters, issuing any approaching ships a “notice to mariners” that NATO forces are active in the area and warning them not to enter.
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, supports the actions the Biden administration has taken but urges a more aggressive response from the West on all fronts. Give Ukraine fighter planes and air defense systems, he tweeted, and help it with cyberattacks and give it antiship missiles to “sink Russian ships in [the] Black Sea”.
The United States has dedicated about $16 billion in aid to Ukraine since the invasion. Meanwhile, the world is expected to pay $320 billion to Russia this year for its energy. Economic sanctions will not force Putin to end the war as long as this gaping loophole exists. The only pressure that will force Russia to the negotiating table is military defeat — in the south. Putin’s Plan A failed, but we cannot let his Plan B succeed.
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for the Atlantic.