‘The Times’: Zelensky leaves Washington without deal to fire missiles at Russia

President Biden met Zelensky in the Oval Office.
Photo: AFP

Zelensky is set to return to Ukraine from Washington without winning permission to use long-range western missiles to strike deep into Russia, notes ‘The Times’.

Zelensky met President Biden and Vice-President Harris separately at the White House to make a personal plea for the lifting of restrictions on British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles or US-made ATACMS.

However, Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, said no shift in Washington’s stance on the use of the long-range missiles was expected to follow the talks, which came less than 24 hours after President Putin warned that a large conventional air attack on Russia by western-backed Ukraine could trigger a nuclear response.

Before the meeting, Biden promised an increase in US support for Kyiv, including nearly $8 billion in military aid and new munitions.

The United States has provided about $175 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine during the war.

Zelensky visited Capitol Hill earlier, where he was met by a bipartisan group of senators who support Kyiv. Lindsay Graham, a Republican senator, said, “if we don’t make that fundamental choice this week, I think the outcome for Ukraine is dire.”

Neither Biden nor Harris made any mention of Putin’s nuclear threats. However, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, described them as “totally irresponsible”. He called on China, which has cautioned Russia against using nuclear weapons, to reiterate to Moscow that “rattling the nuclear sabre” was unacceptable.

The result of November’s US presidential election, which is on a knife-edge, seems set to determine the outcome of the war, if not the future of Ukraine. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, has escalated his attacks on the Ukrainian leader in recent days, saying that Zelensky should have “given up a little bit” of his country to appease Moscow. He has vowed to end American military support for Ukraine should he win.

“Ukraine is gone!” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina this week. “If we made a bad deal, it would have been much better. [Ukraine] would have given up a little bit and everybody would be living.” He accused Democrats of planning to deploy American troops to Ukraine but gave no evidence to support his claim.

Zelensky tries to understand what Biden wants.
Photo: AP

It is time for the United States to offer a compelling vision of what it is trying to achieve in the Ukraine conflict and a strategy for success, states Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and was the senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff during the George W. Bush administration at ‘The National Interest’.

It was a “simple question,” the moderator told former president Donald Trump during the recent presidential debate, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Trump answered that he wanted to end it and has been pilloried for not just saying “yes.” Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t say yes either, but unlike her rival, she made it clear she backed Ukraine.

In truth, it is not a simple question. What does it mean to win? There is no shared view in the West or between the West and Ukraine.

The Biden-Harris administration, meanwhile, has never clearly defined victory or stated unambiguously what it seeks to achieve. It has never publicly claimed Zelensky’s goal as its own. Rather, Biden has so far delivered two inspiring odes to the power of freedom to subdue autocracy, but in neither one did he define victory for Ukraine in concrete terms.

Other officials have offered glimpses into administration thinking, but none has provided a comprehensive articulation of the administration’s goals. Under Congressional pressure, the administration finally sent a classified strategy for Ukraine in mid-September, but no details have yet been made public.

What we are left with are fragments of a policy that is not necessarily internally coherent. The administration, for example, has promised to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” leaving “it” undefined. It has said that it is arming Ukraine now to strengthen its position at the negotiating table without indicating the parameters of the deal it hopes Ukraine could negotiate.

It has declared its goal to be the preservation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence without specifying clearly within what borders, even though the United States officially recognizes the 1991 borders.

And since before the war began, President Joe Biden has been emphatic that the United States will not go to war with Russia to defend Ukraine and run the risk of nuclear cataclysm that would entail. Would that hold even if that were the only way to prevent Ukraine’s defeat and subjugation by Russia? No one knows for sure.

All of this suggests the administration itself has not agreed internally on its goals or that it believes it could not withstand the rigors of public debate. It may also be concerned that, if made public, its vision of success would risk rupturing Western unity and alignment with Ukraine.

It is time for the United States to offer a compelling vision of what it is trying to achieve in the Ukraine conflict.

It is much too late for the Biden administration to take on this task. However, it should be a priority for the next president to define what it means for Ukraine and the United States to win the war.

…There is one non-trivial answer to this question. The overwhelming majority of the all the tens of billions of dollars that the US allocated for "support of Ukraine", remained in the USA – with specific gentlemen. Therefore, the war in Ukraine is a very profitable business for "interested parties".

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