As we enter the third year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, House Speaker Mike Johnson and congressional Republicans are dithering on aid as if the United States will never need allies again. As if Russia is our new best friend. As if he’ll be Speaker forever.
Johnson, a politician and not a military man, has said Ukraine can’t win this war. Gen. Philip Breedlove, former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, says: “If the West chooses to give Ukraine what they need to win, Ukraine will win this war. This war is going to end exactly how Western policymakers want and desire it to end.”
We’re told the two sides are at a stalemate, but consider the sides. Russia is four times the size of Ukraine. Russia is a first-world economy. “Experts” predicted Russia would take Ukraine in three days. Two years later, Ukraine still holds most of its territory. As a Forbes writer put it recently: “Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress continue to withhold U.S. funding for Ukraine.” While Ukrainians are desperately short of ammunition, “Russians—flush with shells from North Korea and Iran—are firing up as many as 10,000 shells a day.”
As a kid I remember seeing Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev on TV pounding with his shoe and shouting, “We will bury you.” Many are mystified at our former president’s embrace of Putin, who is another version of Khruschev – just better dressed.
What’s most stunning about the war today, some six months after Republicans began to hold up funding, is that Ukrainians are still fighting with whatever they’ve got left while the playground bully hemorrhages troops, tanks, planes and ships.
As I started this column, Ukraine had shot down 13 Russian planes in 13 days.
With sea drones and British missiles, Ukraine knocked out 20% of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in four months until Russian vessels ran for safer ports, according to British intelligence. This is what ended the Russian naval blockade and allowed Ukraine to begin shipping grain to feed the world again, reported The Hill.
On the battlefield, Russia doesn’t care how many men it loses. Ukrainian troops post on X (formerly Twitter), “Enemy’s fresh meat is thrown into the grinder” and show gory photos of dead Russians everywhere. In February alone Russia lost nearly 1,000 troops a day.
Breedlove observes, “So far, the Ukrainians have eliminated around 50% of Russian ground troops, perhaps even more.” Our cost? About 4% of the U.S. defense budget.
In fact, for the first two years of the war Americans have primarily given Ukraine weapons from U.S. stockpiles and then refilled stockpiles with newer stuff. And whatever we’ve spent, Europe has spent more.
Lately, the Netherlands said it would send another military aid package to include 22 fast, armored assault boats for Ukraine’s river flotilla. Denmark, the Netherlands and other countries have committed dozens of advanced planes. Back home in Ukraine, volunteers build smoke grenades and stitch camouflage netting.
As I write, a haunting image circulates on X of a small boy found in the rubble after Russian missiles struck an apartment block in Odessa. He will sleep forever in his Batman pajamas, along with an infant and his mother, three of a dozen dead that night and hundreds more while Johnson, or “Moscow Mike” as he’s known on X, plays politics.
Reporters find no Ukrainians willing to give up. Bandera Fella writes from the frontlines: “In the east’s gray zone, our clash with these invaders is relentless. They push from the south, recycling the same tired tactics, thinking we’ll break. Guess what? We’re still here, standing strong, turning their advances into their nightmares. War’s brutal truth: they throw waves, we build walls with their failures.”