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Why Are We Doing Less For Ukraine's Defense Than Tiny Denmark?

Why Are We Doing Less For Ukraine's Defense Than Tiny Denmark?

A little under two months ago, tiny Denmark – with a population less than that of New York City and a GDP of $400 billion – committed its “entire artillery” to Ukraine. “The Ukrainians are asking us for ammunition now. Artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the Munich Security Conference on February 18.

How did we, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, become the country that is turning its back on Ukraine? I’m using the royal “we” here, but you know who I’m talking about: the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, who ordered House Republicans not to bring up for a vote the Senate’s $95 billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel, which has been moldering on Capitol Hill for nearly two months since the Senate passed it on a bipartisan vote of 70 to 29. Trump was said not to want a bipartisan victory for Biden in an election year, so he picked up the phone and called his poodles in the House and killed a potential deal to bring the Senate bill to the floor where it was expected to pass.

Look at this headline in Sunday’s print edition of the New York Times: “Low on Ammunition, Ukraine Is Ill Equipped to Stop Russian Push.” The story describes a 155 mm howitzer position in Eastern Ukraine where Russia has recently made gains on the ground. The crew of the howitzer had a stock of 33 rounds of ammunition when they received an order to fire on a target. Moments later, they had 16 rounds left. “Artillery decides battles,” said Capt. Vladyslav Slominsky, the commander of the battery with the howitzer that was down to only 16 rounds of ammunition. “Who has more wins.”

The artillery is a proud branch in the United States military. They call their branch “The Queen of Battle” because of the firepower that can be brought to bear on the enemy at a moment’s notice. The war that Ukraine has fought against Russia since the 600 mile front line settled into existence late in 2022 has been almost exclusively an artillery war fought with 155 mm howitzers and HIMARS ground-to-ground rockets.

The Russians have more artillery pieces, more rockets, more tanks, and more soldiers, but Ukraine has hung onto the territory they hold, including the parts they took back from Russian forces near Kharkiv and Kherson earlier in the war. Ukraine’s artillery is said to be more accurate and efficient than Russia’s, which wasted tens of thousands of shells firing wildly into the flat agricultural fields of Eastern Ukraine early in 2023 after the front lines stalemated.

Once Russia began its campaign to take individual towns in Eastern Ukraine such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka, their artillery became more accurate. Given small towns as targets, Russian artillery sat back and simply flattened the towns with tens of thousands of artillery rounds, eventually leaving Ukrainian forces no place left to defend, so they pulled back. Now Russia has claimed to have taken the tiny village of Vodayne, about five miles east of Donetsk and a few miles south of Avdiivka. Tactically, it is yet another redoubt that Ukraine had hung onto as the country continues to defend its eastern flank. Strategically, it is not large enough to be significant.

What is significant, however, is why the village was lost: dwindling ammunition stocks.

The Times quoted Swedish military analyst Johan Norberg saying, “You cannot expect people to fight without ammunition.” But you don’t have to interview an expert to know that armies without bullets cease to be armies and turn into targets.

Vladimir Putin knows this like he knows his own name. Even Donald Trump has seen enough gangster movies to know that when you run out of ammo, you get killed. That’s probably why Trump has leaned on House Republicans not to pass the Ukraine aid bill. If Ukraine runs out of ammunition, and Russia starts winning its war on Ukraine, it will make Trump’s pal Putin happy, and the Russian victories will happen on Joe Biden’s watch. In politics, that is called a win-win.

But it’s a lose-lose not only for Ukraine, but for America’s standing in the world as a bulwark against the kind of totalitarian aggression Russia has brought to bear on its neighbor. Russia could not assert its influence over Ukraine by installing puppet presidents like Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian politician Paul Manafort helped to put in power in 2010. Yanukovych proceeded to loot Ukraine by installing cronies from the region of eastern Ukraine with a large Russian-speaking population, the Donbas. Nearly 50 percent of the economic development budget for the entirety of Ukraine went to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under Yanukovych.

When he was overthrown in 2014, Putin invaded and occupied Crimea and probably began his plans to militarily invade and seize all of Ukraine. Yanukovych, naturally, fled to Russia, where he still resides. And Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign in 2016, is said to be in talks to take a prominent position in the current Trump campaign.

What has stood between Putin’s ambitions and Ukraine’s existence is the United States and NATO. Now Donald Trump appears to be running on a platform of turning Ukraine over to Putin and getting the United States out of the NATO alliance, which just last week celebrated its 75th anniversary.

How did we get here? How is it that this corrupt man facing four separate criminal indictments in three different jurisdictions has been able to nearly singlehandedly stymie this country’s ability to help the rest of NATO defeat Putin’s fascistic attempt to take over Ukraine? Why do these Republicans even bother to run for Congress, unless all they really want to do is follow the orders of this man who is weakening the United States with every breath he takes?

What has happened to us? Who are we?

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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Ukraine Delays Interim Government; Russia Vows Not To Interfere

Ukraine Delays Interim Government; Russia Vows Not To Interfere

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — Ukraine’s acting president said Tuesday that it would be at least another two days before an interim government is in place as further negotiations are needed to ensure that a genuine “coalition of national faith” agrees to see the divided country through to May 25 elections.

Interim President Olexander Turchynov made the announcement to the parliament now dominated by opposition figures and defected members of fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovich’s Party of Regions. A provisional government, on which sympathetic Western countries are waiting to work out an urgent bailout for deeply indebted Ukraine, had been expected on Tuesday.

Turchynov also warned of the dangers of separatism threatening Ukraine, which is torn between Russian-leaning eastern citizens and pro-European city-dwellers in the western regions.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin assembled his national security team for a Kremlin caucus on the turmoil in Ukraine, the former Soviet republic Moscow has dominated for centuries. Rossiya-24 television showed the top Cabinet ministers and Russian security advisers gathering in an ornate hall but gave no report on their discussions or decisions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later told journalists at a Moscow press conference that Russia would refrain from interfering in Ukraine’s domestic crisis and expected other countries to do likewise.

Ukraine’s industries and economy are dependent on components and trade with Russian companies, and Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is based in the port of Stavropol, which became a Ukrainian city after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of the eastern half of Ukraine had voted for Yanukovich and supported his decision late last year to continue strengthening economic and political ties with Russia rather than entering into an association agreement with the European Union.

While Russian officials have made disparaging remarks about the Yanukovich opponents now running Ukraine’s government following the president’s de facto ouster last week, Putin has said little about how he expects the power struggle and fight over Ukraine’s future to play out.

Lavrov seemed to be conveying a Kremlin message that it was taking a hands-off approach while watching to see what leadership emerges from talks underway in Kiev.

“We have confirmed our principled position to not interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs and expect all (foreign powers) to follow a similar logic,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov added that Russian leaders consider it “dangerous and counterproductive” for outside political forces to be presenting Ukraine with any “you’re with us or you’re against us” ultimatums.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has been in Kiev for meetings with political and economic strategists for the past two days and a broader international gathering of foreign policy and civil society experts, including U.S. officials, is expected in Kiev in the next few days.

While Lavrov delivered his comments on Ukraine in a calm and businesslike manner, he also criticized the Ukrainian opposition’s decision to move up elections after previously agreeing on Friday to see legislative reforms enacted first and the vote held after September.

The EU-brokered agreement that brought a tentative peace to chaotic Kiev “specifically underlined” that the presidential election was due only by the end of the year, Lavrov said, expressing the Kremlin’s frustration with the fast pace of political changes in Ukraine that have empowered a pro-European leadership.

Both Russian and Western officials have complained that the other side has been trying to influence Ukraine’s future political and economic course over the past three months of unrest.

Anti-government protesters took to the streets of Kiev and other western Ukrainian cities in late November after Yanukovich rejected the EU association deal that had been three years in the making. The protests escalated in January, when the parliament then dominated by Yanukovich allies outlawed the public demonstrations and began a brutal crackdown on those disrupting traffic and government business in central Kiev’s Independence Square, known as Maidan.

The clashes reached a bloody crescendo last week, with at least 82 killed in melees sparked by the president’s allies’ delay of promised legislative reforms to reduce the powers of Ukraine’s presidency and restore the parliamentary democracy in place before Yanukovich’s 2010 election.

Photo: Zurab Dzhavakhadze/Itar-Tass/Abaca Press/MCT

Europeans Gallantly Celebrate Ukraine Outcome

Europeans Gallantly Celebrate Ukraine Outcome

Ukraine Prime Minister Resigns; Parliament Cancels Anti-Protest Laws

Ukraine Prime Minister Resigns; Parliament Cancels Anti-Protest Laws

By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov tended his resignation Tuesday, as the country’s opposition celebrated its first major victory in an ongoing standoff with the government.

Azarov’s resignation comes after two months of mass protests across the country and a week of violent clashes in Kiev in which at least four activists were killed, dozens arrested and hundreds injured on both sides — the worst street violence in the history of post-Soviet Ukraine.

The announcement came after four days of negotiations between opposition leaders and President Victor Yanukovich.

In a statement published on the Cabinet’s official website, Azarov said he resigned to create a possibility for a political compromise.

“We have been doing everything to prevent bloodshed, escalation of violence, violations of citizens’ rights,” the statement said. “For all these difficult years I have been doing my best for Ukraine to develop normally as a democratic European state.”

However, he said, “the scope of the acute and dangerous conflict” compelled him into retirement.

Word of the resignation was met with loud cheers from the thousands of protesters at a tent camp in Independence Square, a staging area of the anti-government protests, as well as those along barricades in central Grushevsky Street, the battlefield of recent days.

“It is good news but we will not go away until all our demands are met,” said young protester Maxim Ivashchenko, whose face was blackened by the soot of street fires. “Now we want Yanukovich to go and we want the murderers of our comrades punished.”

Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko said Azarov resigned “to save face” before he was forced to leave.

“We have been insisting on his resignation for a few months already,” Klitschko said to reporters during an urgent parliamentary session Tuesday. “The resignation of the premier is a step toward the opposition’s victory but it is not a victory yet.”

Yanukovich had proposed a compromise deal over the weekend in which opposition leader Arseny Yatsenyuk was offered the premier’s job and Klitscko the position of deputy premier. They declined.

The resignation of Azarov, who has led the government since 2010, was one of the key demands of opposition leaders, who held him personally responsible, together with Yanukovich, for thwarting the signing of an association agreement with the European Union last November in favor of closer economic ties with Russia.

Azarov, a principal opponent of European integration, argued that such an alignment would mean mass unemployment and a speedy decline of the national economy.

The opposition’s package of demands also included immediate elections for the presidency and parliament, changes in the constitution in favor of a parliamentary republic with presidential powers seriously cut and the immediate release of over 100 protesters still held by the police.

Another key demand was the cancellation of recently adopted laws curbing rights and freedoms and providing punishment of up to 15 years in prison for participation in mass disorders.

In the wake of Azarov’s resignation, the parliament canceled a majority of those controversial laws, hastily passed less than two weeks ago after protests had deteriorated into violent confrontations with riot police in central Kiev.

The opposition hailed the cancellation of the measures and was pressing lawmakers for release of the detainees.

“We are not talking about amnesty but we are demanding the release of prisoners taken POW by the terrorists in power!” Andriy Parubiy, chief of the protest camp’s self-defense forces, told thousands of protesters in Independence Square as the news arrived from parliament.

“I approve of any news which could prevent further bloodshed,” a police officer standing in full anti-riot gear about 60 yards from the protesters said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “People out there are not our enemies. They are our brothers.”

AFP Photo/Vasily Maximov