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It's been a tough week for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced the popular leader of his military, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, with the current army commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi. He has watched the flailing in the US Congress over a new tranche of funding for Ukraine. And Donald Trump, leading in most US presidential polls, is on the campaign trail firing shots at both Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin seems to have a real bounce in his step with an upcoming “election" that he will win handily and a long, propaganda-filled interview with US talk-show host Tucker Carlson. Russian cruise missile and drone attacks hit Ukraine almost daily, and Russian ground operations around Avdiivka are grinding away with modest success in the wake of failed Ukrainian offensives in 2023.
Yes, the Ukrainians did sink another Russian warship in the Black Sea and the European Union came through with a $54 billion aid package earlier this month. But the rumblings of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian military in major Western capitals persists. It feels like a very low point in the fortunes of Zelensky and his people, despite the immense courage and determination they have shown over the past two years.
The Ukrainian war effort needs a reset. What should that look like, and can it succeed?
Let's start with the shift at the top of the military. It is entirely normal to have leadership changes in prolonged campaigns. When I was supreme allied commander of NATO, I had four different generals working successively for me in Afghanistan: Stanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, John R. Allen and Joseph Dunford. In America's Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln went through many top generals before finding the right one in Ulysses S. Grant. Bringing in fresh thinking and rested leaders makes sense.
In Ukraine, the shift was complicated by internal disagreements, in part over the failed offensive campaign and because Zaluzhnyi wanted to mobilize more civilians, a politically unpopular step. But Zelensky managed to paper over the conflict; he awarded the general the highest state honor and it appears there hasn't been a blow up at the highest levels in Kiev.
General Syrskyi will have his work cut out for him. He was born in Russia and has the benefit of a traditional Soviet-style military background, which gives him powerful insights into how Putin's generals think. But he has also proven to be an early innovator in using drones against armor and other “new war" tactics. In terms of the reset, he is starting out emphasizing “clear and detailed planning" and trying to find way to rest his weary troops. The latter will require increased mobilization, probably of a younger cohort of soldiers. Zelensky's hesitance is understandable, but Ukraine simply has to generate more troops despite public opposition.
A second element of a reset be coming up with more advanced warfighting technologies and integrating them into the war effort. At the top of the list will be the F-16 fighters provided by the West, with most of the training done in the US and Germany. These formidable multirole fighters can take on Russian planes in the air and bomb their troops on the ground. While not a total game changer, a significant number of F-16s will help Ukraine across the long battlefront, especially if coupled with Western air defense systems. The problem is that the timeline for deployment keeps lengthening, with “by the end of this year" as the current vague estimate.
Drones are a better story: Improved generations will be operated by a new, dedicated branch of the Ukrainian armed forces (something the US and NATO should consider). And the war at sea, in which Kiev has already sunk at least a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (including the Flagship Moskva), will be enhanced by new anti-ship cruise missiles.
But the third and most difficult portion of the reset is unfortunately not at all under Zelensky's control: the US election, and a Republican Party that is increasingly turning against the Ukrainian cause under the sway of Trump. About half of the Republican Party is now of the erroneous opinion that the Ukraine war is not an American problem, according to recent polling . There is a growing view on the right that if anybody helps Kiev, it should be the Europeans. And all of this is tied to a Trumpian view that NATO is not valuable.
This is a dangerous moment, and not just for Ukraine. If the US walks away — as it did from Europe and Asia in the 1930s — authoritarian powers will fill the void. And we would likely end up, as we did in 1941, embroiled in a conflict on a far larger scale.
Zelensky and his supporters in DC — not just the Biden administration but also Republicans such as the 22 senators who voted in favor of the Ukrainian-Israel aid package this week — need to convince the US public that Ukraine matters and that NATO is a valuable alliance. It commands over 55% of global GDP, has 3 million active-duty troops, and a combined defense budget of over $1 trillion. The collective European defense budget is over $300 billion, more than China and triple that of Moscow. The EU nations pledged more aid to Ukraine in 2023 than the US; to characterize them as freeloaders is a bad faith argument.
Yes, any reset must include changes by the Ukrainian military command and new technologies. But unless a real effort is made to restore the truthful narrative — that Ukraine's fate is tied to Americans' own, and the best mechanism we have to win is NATO — there is real danger ahead. Zelensky can't do this by himself. It will require leadership in Washington from both sides of the aisle.
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Stavridis is a Bloomberg columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an operating executive consultant at the Carlyle Group and chairs the board of counselors at McLarty Associates.
Previously:
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• 06/02/23 Ukraine war may become a proving ground for AI
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• 06/28/22What to expect from NATO's new strategic concept
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