No matter how the Russo-Ukrainian war ends, future historians will ask how it was possible for the Kremlin to intimidate and confound the collective West so effectively.

Moscow’s boldness will seem all the more outrageous while it rules a country with less than one-twentieth of collective Western GDP.

The answer speaks poorly of Western intellectual capabilities and political leadership. Eastern Europeans long warned of the Russian despot’s aggression and his population’s imperialistic drive.

Kyiv has asked for air-defense missiles and F-16s since 2014, and such systems might have deterred the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion. 

Standing By

Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asserted in the 1970s that the comfortable, appeasement-minded citizens of the West were incapable of understanding the deeply authoritarian Soviet political culture and style of governance. But its high-minded academics and officials were just as incapable of dealing with Russia. They deluded themselves with realist, rational-actor, and constructive-engagement arguments into tolerating the Kremlin’s aggressive behavior. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the West did nothing. It stood by after the illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014, and again a few months later after the occupation of the Donbas. 

Being a dictator who is competent, Russian President Vladimir Putin reasonably concluded that a self-disarmed NATO was not a security threat, and that the opportunity was open to attack Ukraine and reconstitute the Russian Empire. We have this on the authority of Putin’s own taunt, echoing Solzhenitsyn more bluntly, that the decadent West and Gayropa had lost the will to defend themselves. The Russian security concerns offered as justification for Moscow’s aggression are a red herring.

It took a full-scale invasion in 2022 to persuade Western policymakers that they had misunderstood Putin and Russia. But the reality and magnitude of the Russian threat to the world have still not quite sunk in. Somehow, the U.S. House of Representatives is deadlocked over further aid to Ukraine, while Western Europe hesitates to respond vigorously to Russian imperialism. Thus has the containment of Russia become much more costly, and the outcome of the war far less predictable. Beyond a vague promise to aid Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” the West has never articulated a practical military strategy for helping Kyiv evict Russian troops from Ukraine. 

Ukraine’s Most Effective Weapon Against Russia 

The latest dose of poor Western judgment was delivered by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a figure Ukraine sees as a friend. Lloyd recently asked Kyiv to stop its effective drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. 

As reported by the Financial Times, the reason for Lloyd’s request was that the White House did not want price increases at American gasoline pumps during President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. Instead, Austin advised Kyiv to direct its drone attacks on Russian airfields and army bases – preferably only those on occupied Ukrainian territory. In fact, Kyiv has long implored Washington for long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighters that would enable precisely that outcome. 

Drones are the only area in which the heavily outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainians have parity with the Russians. The Ukrainians do try to hit airfields and army bases whenever they can, but these are more strongly defended. Attacks against these installations require a much larger number of drones, and Ukraine produces few of these on its own. By halting strikes on Russia’s oil refineries, the White House would deny Ukraine the use of their most effective strategic weapon.

The request fits with a longstanding Western tendency of denying Ukraine the weapons it could use to strike Russian territory. Meanwhile, Russia terrorizes Ukrainian civilians and pulverizes Ukrainian infrastructure with impunity by employing long-range missiles. Even if the Russian army continues to be degraded on the ground, this is a sure formula for Ukrainian and Western failure, because it is merely enough that the Russian forces be the last ones standing.

The White House’s position is both cynical and misguided. It asks Ukrainians to continue shedding their blood so that West-bound Russian oil will keep flowing.  Kyiv refuses to stop its drone strikes, because it believes the strikes can undermine Russian industry’s support of the Kremlin’s broader war effort.

Moscow will never withdraw from Ukraine voluntarily, and there is no discernable threshold of Russian troop losses that could induce the Kremlin to negotiate seriously. The only way to defeat a dictatorial regime that is indifferent toward its own soldiers and its population’s welfare is to destroy that regime’s physical capacity for war.

Western countries need to understand that the current, defensive posture is inadequate to the task of defeating Russia. They must provide the Ukrainians with the weapons that will enable deep strikes into Russian territory and release the one hand that is tied behind the Ukrainians’ backs. 

About the Author

Dennis Soltys is a retired Canadian professor of comparative politics, with specialization in the former-Soviet region. 

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