President Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian warriors and his courageous people fight on. Against all odds, they defeated Vladimir Putin’s army in the Battle of Kyiv. But one inspiring victory does not win a war. They are now bracing for what promises to be an even larger Battle of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials believe could determine the outcome of the war. They still need help from the West — and the West must respond without caving to Russian threats.
This next phase of the war will differ sharply from the one before it. The flat and empty steppes of the east will make it harder for the Ukrainians to use the hit-and-run tactics that have served them so well until now. Now they have an urgent need for tanks, including first and foremost Soviet-era T-72s (which can be supplied by several of NATO’s former Warsaw Pact member countries), as well as other armored vehicles. They also need long-range artillery amply provided with 152-millimeter and 155-millimeter shells, multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), air defense systems such as S-300s, anti-ship missiles to defend coastline cities and MiG-29 fighter aircraft. After six weeks of fighting, Ukraine also needs replenishment of every sort of equipment — from helmets to bullets.
President Biden, NATO allies, and a few other partners have delivered a lot of weaponry already. Biden facilitated the transfer of Slovakia’s S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine by agreeing to reposition more modern Patriot surface-to-air systems to protect Bratislava. Other allies have announced pledges to send armored vehicles, anti-ship missile systems and even tanks. These are great achievements.
The Ukrainians don’t only need Soviet-era heavy weapons. They also need more modern and effective weapons from the West, even if soldiers would have to train for their use off the battlefield. As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has argued, “The more weapons we get, and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved.”
He’s right. But Western leaders are still concerned about Russian threats of escalation. Western intelligence assessments say that delivering fighter jets, for example, will be unacceptable to Putin. Few in Washington, Berlin, Brussels or London want to escalate this war.
This threat of escalation, however, is cheap talk. Putin is bluffing. He is deliberately allowing the U.S. intelligence community to discover data about escalation in order to scare us away from helping Ukrainians win.
Putin’s first bluff was his scariest. Several weeks ago, he threatened consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history” against countries that interfered in Ukraine, and vowed to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
We now know that these words were empty threats, described by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as “nuclear saber-rattling.” According to senior Biden officials with whom I’ve spoken personally, it turns out that Putin did not change the alert status of his nuclear forces. A week later, former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Russian Security Council, explained that Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if it faces an existential threat, even if the other side has not employed nuclear weapons.” No country is threatening to attack, let alone eliminate, Russia.
There is also concern that Moscow might try using tactical nuclear weapons within Ukraine. If faced with defeat, so the argument goes, Putin might be compelled to terrorize Zelensky and Ukrainians into capitulation.
Yet this scenario is also highly unlikely. Crossing this threshold would alienate many counties currently sitting on the sidelines, including first and foremost China. Russia would become even more isolated internationally. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons would endanger domestic support for the war. Russians do not condone the use of nuclear weapons. Most analysts assume that this second use of nuclear weapons in world history would force Kyiv to surrender. I’m not so sure. The Ukrainians’ cause is just; their will to fight is extraordinary. After a nuclear attack, Ukrainians would be more likely to double down than capitulate, and could even try to take the war to Russia.
Russia has also been making non-nuclear threats. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Russia would see any weapons transports into Ukrainian territory as “fair game.” Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov similarly commented that Western armaments shipments to Kyiv were “not just a dangerous move” but turned “these convoys into legitimate military targets.”
Yet here, too, there is little substance to the bluster. Russia’s army is struggling mightily in a war against a smaller and lesser-armed Ukrainian army. Under such circumstances, Putin is highly unlikely to attack the largest military alliance in the world, anchored by the most powerful military in the world, the United States. Putin is angry and unhinged, but not suicidal.
Biden and his national security team might have classified intelligence that suggests that these risks of escalation are greater than I can assess through open sources. If not, however, then the free world needs to provide Ukrainians with the quality and quantity of weapons to prevail in Donbas. A Ukrainian win or stalemate in that battle will make us and our NATO allies more secure. A loss will produce the opposite.
