West Realizing More Military Aid to Ukraine ‘Lost Cause’ – Ex-Pentagon Analyst
06:47 GMT 25.10.2023 (Updated: 07:12 GMT 25.10.2023)
© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY
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Kiev's botched counteroffensive has prompted the US to reconsider its policy of providing military assistance to Ukraine, David T. Pyne, an EMP Task Force scholar and former US Department of Defense officer, told Sputnik.
The size and rate of US military aid to the Kiev regime has drastically decreased, according to statistics.
The most recent package of assistance, the 48th of its kind, amounted to a mere $200 million, the same as the sum recorded in 2021 prior to the commencement of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
The reason for the decrease in Washington’s military support to Kiev was that “the US appropriated a vast amount of foreign aid for Ukraine, including $47.9 billion in December 2022,” Pyne stated.
According to him, it was done because the Republican Party “was elected to majority control of the US House of Representatives and then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had declared before the election there would be no more blank check for Ukraine if the Republicans took control of the House.”
“This aid was the amount the Biden administration believed was necessary to fully support Ukraine’s military and financial needs through the end of fiscal year 2023 ending in September 2023. There is simply not very much money left which has been appropriated by Congress last year to give to Ukraine,” Pyne added.
He recalled that the White House “has just presented Congress with a $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Palestine totaling $61.4 billion for Ukraine alone which is the amount it views Ukraine will need to continue fighting Biden’s proxy war against Russia through the end of fiscal year 2024 through next September.”
When asked why the US shifted its focus towards providing Kiev with more essential and defensive weapons instead of so-called "hi-tech" and offensive ones, Pyne suggested that the move is “likely a recognition of the catastrophic failure of the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive.” The analyst stressed that the counteroffensive failed “despite Ukraine using its most elite Western trained brigades and its most capable Western supplied weapon systems including German Leopard 2A5 tanks and US M-1A1 SA tanks.”
“Senior Western government leaders and intelligence officials are confronted with the stark reality that Ukraine has exhausted its counteroffensive capabilities and thus its forces must be redeployed to more defensible positions to guard against an expected Russian winter offensive which they believe could succeed in taking back significant amounts of Ukrainian territory over the next few to several months,” Pyne noted.
He argued that while Kiev will continue to present a “wish list” for Western weapons, the West’s willingness to supply them “will depend both on how they think Russia might respond to providing those additional weapon systems an on whether the US and its NATO allies have sufficient weapons in their stockpiles to do so.”
“I would think that Ukraine can expect to receive far fewer artillery systems and munitions from the US in the future as those systems are now in short supply and the outbreak of the war in Israel has shown the need for the US to maintain a significant reserve stockpile of such munitions rather than ship them all to Ukraine to fight an unwinnable war against the Russian Federation,” the analyst underscored.
Touching upon a current decrease in deliveries of armored vehicles to Ukraine from the West, Pyne suggested that Western leaders “understand Ukraine is very unlikely to be able to retake additional territory from Russia due to the fact that it has suffered catastrophic losses during and previous to its counteroffensive and that it will most certainly fail to achieve its military objectives.”
“I think they are beginning to realize that further military aid to Ukraine is a lost cause and that the only way the war will end is with a negotiated compromise peace agreement. I think they understand that the time is fast approaching when Ukraine will have little choice but to seek peace negotiations with Russia to end the conflict as Western willingness to support Ukraine continues to decrease particularly in terms of the popular support of the American people to continue to do so,” according to Pyne.
Asked whether there will be a decrease or increase in US military supplies to Ukraine in the near future, he said, “assuming a Ukraine aid package is approved by Congress which is roughly the amount which the Biden administration has requested, I do not believe we will see either an increase or decrease in the US military supplies being provided by the Biden administration.”
“Only if the aid package is voted down by the US House of Representatives would we see a substantial decrease in the aid being provided by the US to Ukraine,” Pyne concluded.
Despite extensive military assistance from the West, Kiev's counteroffensive, which began in early June, proved to be a resounding failure, resulting in the loss of over 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Shortly after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, the United States and its allies stepped up their military aid to Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly warned that NATO countries are "playing with fire" by supplying arms to the Kiev regime, which the Kremlin said adds to prolonging the conflict in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that any shipment of weapons to Kiev would be considered a legitimate target for Russian forces.
