Unlike many TV series, most military battles do not feature tidy endings. The long history of warfare includes few fights that conclusively settled the larger struggle, which is why we know the names of the relative handful that did: Yorktown, Waterloo, Hastings.
It bears repeating, though, that most analysts expected a swift Russian victory when Vladimir Putin unleashed his ruinous invasion nearly 15 months ago. They were wrong. Ukraine’s military forces — highly motivated, ably led, technically agile and fighting, it’s worth remembering, for their homes, families and very national identity — have shocked the world with their success. Despite massive numerical inferiority, they held off a far more powerful invader intent on a land grab. And over the course of a few months last summer and fall, they pushed Moscow’s forces back from more than 10,000 square miles of territory taken in the war’s initial weeks.
It’s also worth recalling that much of their success took place before the United States and its NATO allies provided much of the staggering quantities of arms and munitions as well as training that have now been rendered to Kyiv’s forces. The coming clash will be a measure not only of Ukraine’s resolve and skill, which it has already proved in spades, but the effective use to which it can continue to put some of the West’s most advanced weapons.
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End of carousel- The Biden administration releases a review on the Colorado River.
- The misery of Belarus’s political prisoners should not be ignored.
- Biden has a new border plan.
- The United States should keep the pressure on Nicaragua.
- America’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
- The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
The Biden administration released an environmental impact statement outlining options for cutting use of the Colorado River. Water allocations could prioritize farmers in California based on centuries-old water rights, or involve proportional cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada. The review also included the costs of the status quo.
The administration will likely decide on a course of action by August. As we outlined in an editorial in February, a voluntary agreement between the states is the best option — and a dramatic reimagining of water use is needed thereafter.
Ihar Losik, one of hundreds of young people unjustly jailed in Belarus for opposing Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, attempted suicide but was saved and sent to a prison medical unit, according to the human rights group Viasna. Losik, 30, a blogger who led a popular Telegram channel, was arrested in 2020 and is serving a 15-year prison term on charges of “organizing riots” and “incitement to hatred.” His wife is also a political prisoner. Read more about their struggle — and those of other political prisoners — in a recent editorial.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
Some 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners left that Central American country for the United States in February. President Daniel Ortega released and sent them into exile in a single motion. Nevertheless, it appears that Mr. Ortega let them go under pressure from economic sanctions the United States imposed on his regime when he launched a wave of repression in 2018. The Biden administration should keep the pressure on. Read recent editorials about the situation in Nicaragua.
Inflation remains stubbornly high at 6.4 percent in January. The Federal Reserve’s job is not done in this fight. More interest rate hikes are needed. Read a recent editorial about inflation and the Fed.
Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
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Unfortunately, the stress in that assessment needs to be on the word “some.” Because while the gusher of Western materiel to Ukraine has been impressive, it has also been too slow and barely adequate to the task at hand: forcing the retreat of one of the world’s five biggest militaries.
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Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, said in December his forces needed 300 main battle tanks, an assessment some analysts regarded as conservative. His forces have received about 230. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government have pleaded for long-range missiles, specifically a U.S.-made system known as ATACMS. Those have been denied by President Biden. So have F-16 fighter jets, which the Ukrainians also badly want. And the West’s ability to produce and ship artillery ammunition, which has been the Ukrainian military’s bread and butter for most of the war, has been all too finite.
That does not mean Ukraine’s offensive is doomed. It does mean that Washington and its European allies have not quite matched their full-throated rhetorical support of Ukraine with an unbridled supply of the weapons that Kyiv, and many military experts, say Ukraine’s soldiers need. Ukraine has been helped enormously by Western provisions. An imponderable of the future fighting will be how things might have gone differently, or better, if the West had sent more.
Despite Ukraine’s astonishing battlefield successes so far, Putin’s forces still occupy about 18 percent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014 and then annexed, illegally. Kyiv’s coming counteroffensive is aimed at regaining as much of that territory as possible. Given Russia’s inherent advantages — especially the sheer size of its forces and an unfettered industrial mobilization in support of the war — Ukraine should get credit for recapturing any territory. Unfortunately, that is not likely.
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End of carouselPost Opinions provides commentary on the war in Ukraine from columnists with expertise in foreign policy, voices on the ground in Ukraine and more.
Columnist David Ignatius covers foreign affairs. His columns have broken news on new developments around the war. He also answers questions from readers. Sign up to follow him.
Iuliia Mendel, a former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, writes guest opinions from inside Ukraine. She has written about trauma, Ukraine’s “women warriors” and what it’s like for her fiance to go off to war.
Columnist Fareed Zakaria covers foreign affairs. His columns have reviewed the West’s strategy in Ukraine. Sign up to follow him.
Columnist Josh Rogin covers foreign policy and national security. His columns have explored the geopolitical ramifications of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Sign up to follow him.
Columnist Max Boot covers national security. His columns have encouraged the West to continue its support for Ukraine’s resistance. Sign up to follow him.
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Putin has calculated, probably correctly, that time is his ally and that the West’s commitment to Kyiv will sooner or later be subverted by “Ukraine fatigue,” exacerbated by the cost to European and American taxpayers. Ukrainian leaders agree with that assessment and therefore are fully aware that they are underdogs not just on the battlefield but also in the parallel struggle over expectations management. Making major territorial gains will not only be a boost to the morale of Ukraine’s own troops and citizens; it might also be a necessary precondition of maintaining the West’s flow of arms. “I believe that the more victories we have on the battlefield, frankly, the more people will believe in us, which means we will get more help,” Mr. Zelensky told The Post in Kyiv last week.
That is a clear-eyed assessment. It is simultaneously true that whatever obstacles, setbacks, reversals and disappointments that Ukraine might suffer — and it will surely suffer some — should not lead to premature conclusions that its counteroffensive has failed. In fact, Ukraine, with the West’s help, has already won an enormous strategic victory by standing up to Mr. Putin’s unwarranted, bloody-minded aggression and exposing Russia’s military as the poorly trained, badly motivated, ill-disciplined and ineptly led force that it is.
The Kremlin has tried to dismember and erase a sovereign state from the map. It has failed. But the fight to force the further retreat of Russia’s troops continues. Ukraine’s fight is the free world’s fight — for the bedrock right of any country to choose its destiny as part of the family of democratic, pluralistic and tolerant nations. The West should not waver — before or after Ukraine’s offensive — whether it moves the front line miles or mere inches.