Too little too late: US allies say Biden strategy cost Ukraine chance of victory

KYIV – In the month US President Joe Biden has left in office, his administration is focused on using all the resources it has left to deliver military aid to Ukraine and more sanctions aimed at weakening Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economy.

Officials in Ukraine and several allied capitals say it is too little too late. 

Regardless of what Mr Biden does in his final weeks, they said, Ukraine is heading toward a bitter settlement in which President Volodymyr Zelensky may have to leave swathes of territory in limbo in exchange for security guarantees that fall short of the Nato membership he has pleaded for.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that outcome will largely be a consequence of decisions that Mr Biden took, or failed to take, over the past two years.

Despite the US sending more than US$90 billion (S$122.5 billion) in aid and arms, some allies are frustrated with Mr Biden for stalling on key decisions to deliver more advanced weapons at crucial points in the conflict. 

In the fall of 2022, Ukrainian forces had Mr Putin on the back foot and Mr Zelensky was appealing to Mr Biden for more weapons to press home his advantage.

But Mr Biden hesitated. His thinking was shaped by the possibility that an escalation might bring Russia’s nuclear arsenal into play, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has suggested. 

“His heart was undoubtedly in the right place – he understood the importance of standing with Ukraine against Russian aggression,” former British defence secretary Grant Shapps said in an interview. “However, his approach was often too cautious and too hesitant, holding back on delivering the decisive support needed to tip the balance.”

Mr Sullivan has refuted that view, saying on Dec 7 that the US operation to arm Ukraine both before and during the war had been an “extraordinary feat”.

Indeed, US support was critical for ensuring that Ukraine was not overrun, especially at the start of the war, and rallying allies after the invasion.

Other US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, voiced their frustration with some European governments who they said were slow to accept that Mr Putin would invade and then reluctant to ship weapons at all, at least until they learned of the abuses the Russians had perpetrated.

Europe has often bristled at tougher sanctions and even as the US position on inviting Ukraine to join Nato appeared to soften, opposition in Berlin and elsewhere remained firm, the officials noted.

The paradox, other officials said, is that the outcome for Ukraine is now similar regardless of whether Mr Biden or Donald Trump are in charge.

US President-elect Trump

has called for an immediate ceasefire

, and his national security nominees have indicated that any deal would likely see Ukraine having to accept freezing its territory along current battle lines and give up its aspiration of joining Nato any time soon.

Behind the incipient blame game lies a deeper truth that frustrates officials on both sides of the Atlantic: for all the talk of European capitals reviving their hard power, the US is still the only Nato country that can tip the balance in a major conflict involving Russia.

So the outcome of the war in Ukraine will inevitably be shaped by decisions taken in the White House. 

As a Cold War veteran who joined arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union, Mr Biden was obsessed with the danger of nuclear escalation, one of the officials said.

When urged to do more, US officials repeatedly said that the risks were just too great. Other allies, like Germany, had similar worries. 

The fundamental problem, according to two senior European officials, was that Mr Biden’s strategy seemed geared to preventing Ukraine from losing, without setting out a path to victory.

That, the officials said, left Ukraine locked into a drawn-out conflict costing tens of thousands of lives.

But going all-in was not the only option open to Mr Biden. 

Less than a year into the war, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley offered an alternative approach which would not have incurred the same risk of Russian escalation: push Mr Zelensky into talks with Mr Putin. 

“The Russian military is really hurting bad,” Gen Milley said in November 2022. “You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at your strength, and your opponent is at weakness.” 

At that point in the conflict, though, such suggestions were considered beyond the pale. The mantra from western officials, in public and private, was that only Mr Zelensky and the Ukrainians would decide when to negotiate.

According to a senior European official, Mr Biden had two strategic options: ramp up support to let Kyiv finish the job, or push for peace negotiations. He chose neither. 

While the US did increase weapons supplies ahead of the failed counter-offensive of 2023, two former British officials said they had tried to convince Mr Biden that much more was needed much more quickly, but they ran into his concerns of nuclear escalation.

Those concerns were overstated, one British official said, because at every stage the Russian threats proved illusory.

US officials argue that, on the contrary, sabotage attacks in Europe and Moscow’s increasingly intensive targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure show that Mr Putin was prepared to escalate so they had to take his nuclear threats seriously. 

“The President has another responsibility that’s unique,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at an event in Washington this week.

“Where the buck stops is at that desk, and it has been his responsibility to make sure that Ukraine has everything we can possibly provide to deal with the aggression – but also to avoid a direct conflict with Russia. We don’t need a direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.”

Officials in Washington said that the US ultimately sent everything it could, when stocks allowed and when in their assessment capabilities made sense on the battlefield.

To that effect, the ramp-up in ammunition supplies has helped to narrow a Russian advantage, which had seen them firing several times more shells than the Ukrainians earlier in the conflict.  

US officials also argue that no single capability is a silver bullet, and that Ukraine is now impeded more by a shortage of manpower than weapons.

Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns said earlier in 2024 that there was “a genuine risk of a potential use of tactical nuclear weapons” in the fall of 2022, but that the US and its allies shouldn’t be intimidated by what he called Moscow’s sabre-rattling.

Mr Burns met his Russian counterpart in Turkey that November to warn him against the use of nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, as Mr Biden agonised over whether to send more air defences, longer range missiles, or fighter jets to Kyiv, Mr Putin trained his missiles on Ukraine’s cities.

That weakened Kyiv’s economy and the resolve of its people, degrading the war-torn country’s ability to fight back, while Moscow was granted crucial time to prepare and adapt its defences.

“We do believe that earlier and more would have been quite decisive,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze said in an interview. “But it is what it is.” BLOOMBERG