‘Lipstick on a Pig’: Zelensky’s US Trip Revealed Deepening Fractures in NATO Support
© AFP 2023 / SUSAN WALSH
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As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrapped up his trip to the United States on Friday, where he spoke at the United Nations and visited the White House, he is preparing to return to Ukraine with far less than he expected. An expert noted the US and Ukraine are struggling to make a bad situation look better than it is.
Retired CIA intelligence officer and former US State Department official Larry Johnson told Sputnik that “nothing of substance” had come from Zelensky’s trip to Washington, DC, but that careful study of the demeanor of Zelensky and several American officials revealed “they've had some very uncomfortable conversations behind the scenes.”
“He’s not going to get the ATACMS that he claimed he wanted,” Johnson said, referring to the ground strike missile that is launched from a HIMARS rocket system. He noted “they are sending some M1 Abrams tanks next week - that was already on the table.”
“What was clear is that you've got a disconnect between the rhetorical position, what the Biden administration is saying publicly to support Zelensky, and what it's actually doing,” he pointed out.
“On the one hand, they are stridently insisting that they're going to support Ukraine to the end, that Zelensky is on their team, etc. But when it comes to the actual assistance, they didn't increase - they're going to continue to provide aid, but they're not providing any kind of advanced weapons system. I don't think they do have a weapon system that would make a difference. But, you know, for example, they talked about: ‘Oh, we have to provide Ukraine with their defense.’ I thought that was what the Patriot batteries were for. Clearly, the Patriots have failed in their mission. And it's not like the United States has a better air defense system than the Patriot batteries - that's the best we have to offer. That didn't work. But they're talking about providing some more air defense capabilities. I think it's a meaningless gesture,” he said.
“The problem is, it doesn’t matter what equipment or money the United States supplies. The problem Ukraine faces is the lack of manpower, that they've suffered such enormous casualties during this failed counteroffensive that their ability to replace those is a challenge.”
Johnson noted that during Zelensky’s visit, there were “subtle gestures” but nothing like the hero’s welcome he was given before.
22 September 2023, 18:17 GMT
“During his previous trip, he was celebrated with a joint session of Congress and got to kiss [then-House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, and yet this time he didn't get that. He did meet with some members of Congress and he heard some challenges to his position. I think there's still a majority in the Congress, in both the House and Senate, that are saying that they really strongly support Ukraine, but there's a growing number of voices that are saying: ‘no, we need to spend that money that's been going to Kiev here in the United States, in Maui, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco.’ There's growing pressure to spend those funds in the states as opposed to selling it overseas.”
“He didn't get a joint press conference. They did put out some sort of controlled video of both Biden and Zelensky reading prepared remarks and setting it in a controlled environment, where the press were spectators but not able to ask questions. But they didn't have a side-by-side press-conference. So, it was a much more tepid response this time compared to previous ones. And he didn't go back with a greater economic package than he anticipated prior to arriving. Plus, on top of it, he did have Poland and the relationship to Poland and Ukraine was sort of a backdrop to all of this,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., right, listen.
© AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
“I paid a lot of attention to the facial expression on Zelensky and his entourage at the United Nations the other day, sitting side by side with [US Secretary of State] Tony Blinken and [US climate envoy] John Kerry. And they all looked very, very unhappy. And this was while Biden was saying positive things about: ‘We're going to do this for Ukraine’ and ‘the world needs to come together.’ That lack of looking happy tells me they've had some very uncomfortable conversations behind the scenes. I know that within the intelligence community, at least according to [US investigative journalist] Seymour Hersh, the CIA believes that the war is lost, Ukraine has no viable way forward. Perhaps some of that information has percolated through.”
Johnson said the latest weapons page was “more of a gesture of support” than it was anything capable of pushing the conflict in Ukraine’s favor.
“They're going to provide more HIMARS missiles, supposedly, or rockets. But those systems have been hit and destroyed with some regularity. We saw - this goes back to the Sevastopol missile strike today - there's probably a Storm Shadow [cruise missile that was fired], it looks like some were shot down, it's not clear to me whether any actually got through or that what hit the headquarters was debris. But it just goes to highlight that Ukraine does not have an unlimited supply of these. And whatever the United States is able to supply is not - it's temporary. It's not like they're committing to supply: ‘Oh, yeah, we're going to give you 10,000 HIMARS rockets a month.’ Something like that would be significant because the United States doesn't have the ability to produce and supply such an amount.”
He noted the $325 million in weapons was "not going to change the ability of the Ukrainian Army because it’s [not] going to increase its ability to carry out military operations against Russia. I think that's the critical concern. Is it going to allow the Ukrainian Army to continue to function for the foreseeable future? Yes.”
“From that standpoint, the US aid is critical to keeping the Ukrainian Army in the field and able to engage Russia. But it does not provide enough aid to be able to shift the balance in a way that Russia would be at a disadvantage militarily,” he explained.
Johnson said the US was sending a tiny fraction of what had recently been promised by the White House because “the political environment is starting to change in Washington. It's no longer massive public support for the policy. In fact, there's a majority of Americans who are actually opposed to sending more aid to Ukraine, but that message has yet to get through to all members of Congress.”
22 September 2023, 19:02 GMT
“They call it ‘putting lipstick on a pig,’” he explained, referencing an American expression.
“You take a pig and you put lipstick on it to try to make it look pretty. This trip was: he had to put some ‘lipstick on a pig.’ The situation is not good. Despite all of the claims that Ukraine's achieving progress and showing Ukraine on the road to victory. The reality is just the opposite. And instead of finding greater support within Europe, with NATO becoming more unified, it's just the opposite. NATO's becoming more fractured, so there's not any good news really for Zelensky, and yet he has to pretend that things are looking up and things are good. But even in some of his recent interviews, he's been less ebullient, less confident. We're going to see him showing signs of growing frustration and concern over the coming weeks.”
Asked about a supposed joint weapons production effort between Kiev and Washington that Zelensky claimed was in the works, Johnson laughed, telling Sputnik to remember that Zelensky is “a comedian.”
“That's got to be a joke. They don't have - they've got no wherewithal to do that. Not even in the United States, as [US national security adviser] Jake Sullivan admitted yesterday, that they were trying to get the US defense industry to produce more 155-millimeter artillery shells. They can't do it - they don't have the ability. They don't have the factories, they don't have the workers, they don't have the materials. Where are they going to build these sites that Zelensky is talking about? Any location in western Ukraine will be struck by Russia. Russia has the missiles to hit those locations. So I think it's just laughable.”
