It is military equipment that has been the pretext for numerous conversations between the Ukrainian leadership and its foreign partners since February 24, 2022. Writes Johnston Harewood
The Ukrainian counteroffensive is not progressing as originally envisioned.
The victorious march of the Ukrainian armed forces, which, according to the plan, was supposed to begin at the line of contact between the troops in the Zaporizhzhya region and, accordingly, end near the coast of the Sea of Azov, thereby cutting off Russia’s land route to the Crimean peninsula, turned out quite differently. Having stopped even before reaching the first line of defense of the Russian troops, the Ukrainian troops were stuck in minefields, moving forward at the cost of very high casualties among the personnel, while losing an unimaginable number of vehicles.
It is military equipment that has been the pretext for numerous conversations between the Ukrainian leadership and its foreign partners since February 24, 2022. Since the war began, Kyiv has already received more than 70 billion euros in military aid alone, which is almost half of Ukraine’s GDP last year.
At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not consider the provided assistance sufficient for the “war to end”. This is not surprising at all – when 60% of all weapons supplied go into the pockets of Ukrainian officials or to black markets, there is no reason to think otherwise.
The above facts have long been a source of concern among Ukraine’s foreign partners. Those countries that have expressed strong support for Kyiv since the beginning of the war are gradually changing their rhetoric, backing it up with difficult decisions for the Ukrainian government. For example, Poland, one of Kyiv’s main allies, became one of the countries that signed a declaration extending the ban on grain imports from Ukraine. Without any doubt, this was a low blow for Zelensky, who is now trying to deal with the consequences of the termination of the grain deal with Russia, while his government is searching for ways to market its agricultural products.
If grain export is a sensitive but solvable problem in the long term (Croatia and Lithuania are ready to help Ukraine in this matter, receiving, respectively, payment for the use of their ports), then the supply of arms to Kyiv is a permanent and pressing issue. In conditions of not the easiest counteroffensive, the Ukrainian armed forces are demanding more and more ammunition and weapons. What is most intriguing is that the moment may soon come when resources will no longer be available to Ukraine in the amount necessary for waging war.
An information bomb has rumbled from the Financial Times. Their recent article explains that US President Joe Biden has asked Congress to finance the supply of arms to Taiwan using funds included in the so-called “Ukrainian” budget.
The American government’s support for Taiwan should not surprise anyone – the island has become a symbol of “democracy”, the defense of which is given a significant place in the Biden administration. The fact that the main reason for the US leadership’s actions is to increase pressure on Beijing is not worth mentioning once again.
So what about Ukraine? There has been no reaction to Biden’s proposal from official Kyiv at the moment, but it can be assumed that the Ukrainian government is unlikely to be happy about this scenario. Zelensky himself has repeatedly stated that the assistance provided to the Ukrainian armed forces by other countries is not enough, time after time calling on world leaders to provide Ukraine with more military aid for the counteroffensive.
At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult for officials to hide their irritation when it comes to the Ukrainian issues. For example, not so long ago, Marcin Przydacz, Head of the International Policy Bureau in Poland, said that “it would be worth them starting to appreciate the role that Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years”. The reaction was immediate – the Polish ambassador to Ukraine was summoned to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the news about it quickly spread in the media, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the incident “a serious political and diplomatic mistake by Kyiv”.
Another example of dissatisfaction with the actions of the Ukrainian leadership can be seen in the words of British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, who during the recent NATO summit in Vilnius said that Kyiv should be more grateful to the UK for the assistance provided.
Such a reaction from partner states may indicate that the countries, if not tired of supporting Zelensky, are already very close to such a state. A year and a half of war has not passed without a trace not only for Ukraine or Russia, but also for all countries of the world. The conflict has affected both the world economy and the whole system of international relations.
Just imagine – your country provides Ukraine with quite significant aid and financial support, and Zelensky says that this is not enough while continuing the war without any hint of negotiations and stopping the conflict. You must agree that logic in this case takes a back seat.
In the current circumstances, it is difficult to predict anything. The situation is changing almost every day, but if we imagine that the situation with the Ukrainian counteroffensive will not change shortly, the heads of the world’s leading powers will induce Zelensky to negotiate. If the Ukrainian president does not agree, the options for the development of events can be completely unpredictable.
