Biden is running out of time — and ideas — for Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky began a tour of the Baltics on Wednesday to plead for more Western weapons to defend his country as US aid to Kyiv remains stuck in Congress.

There’s a reason US lawmakers have grown reluctant.

After sending billions in cash and military hardware to Kyiv — $75 billion by some estimates — the Russians and Ukrainians are now deadlocked on the battlefield. 

Ukraine’s victory was never in the cards with Joe Biden in the White House.

From the crisis’s earliest days, Biden boxed himself in – forced to choose between sacrificing Ukraine or helping Kyiv secure a victory at the risk of raising Putin’s ire against the US. 

Biden could have chosen to preempt this war — along with Ukraine’s destruction.

For months there were clear signs that Russia intended to invade — along with the opportunity to negotiate a settlement before war broke out. 

Indeed, rumblings of Moscow’s aggression had been brewing for years — if not decades. 

Back when he was vice president to Barack Obama and his go-to person on Ukraine, Biden ignored crucial intelligence about the long-term threat posed by Russia.

Instead, he focused on executing a Russia “reset” aimed at improving relations with Putin and promoting friendship between Moscow and Washington.

As a former senior official in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, I personally (and repeatedly) briefed Obama’s national security staff on Putin’s expansionist ambitions.

Yet, Biden and his team, many of whom would later join his presidential administration, failed to devise a viable strategy to counter Putin’s long-term war plans.

The result: Biden was completely blindsided by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He shouldn’t have been.

Just a few months earlier, Biden’s DIA Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Putin had mobilized troops near Russia’s border with Ukraine — and that he had no idea why.

No reason – for real? Did Team Biden think the Russian infantrymen were merely tourists? 

Once the invasion was in full swing, Biden threw money and weaponry at the problem with little sense of how Ukraine could win.

He opted to send defensive weapons and shorter-range missiles, rather than the more robust arsenal he feared might provoke a conflict between NATO and Russia.

Team Biden also failed to develop counter-measures to secure US satellite and communications networks from retaliatory Russian attacks. 

Indeed, America’s greatest strength, but also its Achilles Heel, is our reliance on technology across civilian and military life.

Our satellites and communications networks are highly vulnerable to strikes by space and cyber weapons.

Russia has infiltrated virtually every federal agency — including the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon.

They’ve penetrated our critical infrastructure, including power grids, financial institutions, and in October 2022, multiple US airports – temporarily taking them offline.

In 2021, Russia launched a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, a critical element of U.S. petroleum infrastructure, resulting in gas shortages, price hikes, and panicked consumers.

Meanwhile, since 2007, Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers have breached U.S. air defenses near Alaska up to 15 times a year and in 2015 flew within 40 miles of the coast of California.

Russian nuclear submarines also routinely sail close to US shores – at times undetected for weeks.

Given these US vulnerabilities, Biden has embraced caution rather than going all-in to arm and defend Ukraine.

He’s vocally ruled out deploying troops on the ground.

And as Putin continues to beef up his nuclear arsenal — often in violation of an INF treaty —  Biden remains guided by a fear of nuclear war, warning major donors last October that the threat of Nuclear Armageddon from Putin was real. 

At every stage of the Ukraine crisis, Biden has opted for an “escalation control” strategy — providing just enough military hardware to virtue signal support, but an insufficient amount to win.

Nearly 18 months into the war, in fact, Biden finally authorized long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles for Ukraine, capable of striking into Russian territory.

Now that Biden has depleted the US weapons arsenal, the White House announced on December 27th that the $250 million security package to Ukraine will be its last.

On the same day, Politico reported that the Biden Administration may be negotiating an end to the war that would allow Putin to retain almost 20% of Ukrainian territory it now occupies. 

Time is running out for Ukraine.

Nearly a quarter million of its citizens are dead or severely wounded.

Nearly $140 billion worth of national infrastructure has been destroyed, according to a mid-2023 report by the Kyiv School of Economics.  

And nearly 12 million Ukrainians have been displaced.

Ukraine is now fully dependent on the West — just as Biden has run out of ideas on how peace might be achieved.

Rebekah Koffler is the president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting, a former DIA intelligence officer, and the author of  “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America.”