Europe Must Ramp Up Its Support for Ukraine

With Ukrainian forces stalled on the battlefield, and major aid packages for Kyiv blocked by Hungary in the EU and by Republican policymakers in the United States, the Western alliance in support of Ukraine appears increasingly weak and divided. Several scholars and policymakers have assessed this scenario—and reached the conclusion that a pivot to a defensive strategy could eventually bring Putin to the negotiating table. According to that line of thought, a new approach focused on securing territories that Ukraine already controls would consolidate Western support and eventually demonstrate to Russia that it cannot outlast Ukraine’s war effort. But that analysis reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the Russian president and how he thinks. Any Western backtracking will only encourage Putin to double down on his assault on Ukraine. As long as he believes that military success is possible, Putin will refuse to negotiate—and he will keep fighting. 

With that reality in mind, Western policymakers must revise their approach to supporting the Ukrainian war effort. Ukraine’s partners should move from a halfhearted to a full-throated offensive strategy that provides the embattled country with all the weapons necessary to gain the upper hand and push back Russian forces. Europe, in particular, should do more. This includes delivering the maximum possible quantities of materiel from the EU’s existing stockpiles of relevant weapons systems, boosting military production, and expanding each country’s production capabilities. Specifically, Europe can and should give far more middle- and long-range cruise missiles to Kyiv. Doing so would allow Ukraine to target Russian infrastructure in the occupied territories while shielding its soldiers from the hazards of the frontlines. Europe must also speed up and extend the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, which would enable the country to establish air superiority. Coupled with the dispatch of additional air defense systems, such as Patriot and IRIS-T missiles, such aid would allow Ukraine to effectively pressure Russian forces and win the upper hand on the battlefield. 

Only then, with Russia on the back foot, will negotiations become possible. Only then will Western policymakers be able to achieve the real criteria for a victory: ensuring that Putin’s war of aggression does not pay off for Russia and that Europe does not continue to be a theater of war. Should the West capitulate to fatigue and infighting, however, it will simply play into Putin’s hands. A Russian triumph would set the stage for further war across the continent, bringing turmoil ever closer to NATO territory. 

AVOIDING SELF-DEFEAT

The current situation on the battlefield is indeed alarming for Ukraine and its partners. Russian forces have dug in behind miles of minefields and trenches, making it incredibly difficult and costly for Ukrainian soldiers to gain territory. A stalemate has set in; the conflict, now approaching its third year, has already exacted hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties and is becoming a brutal war of attrition. But those making the case for negotiations with Moscow fail to mention the context in which this worsening situation arose. Kyiv has not achieved major battlefield gains because its partners in the United States and Europe have not provided the necessary weapons to gain air control and effectively penetrate Russian positions and infrastructure in the occupied territories and Crimea. 

As the war has dragged on, Russia has succeeded in firing up its military industrial complex and adjusting to a wartime economy. Its material capabilities have now surpassed those of Ukraine, which continues to depend on arms supplies from the West. Although Ukraine’s partners have retained stockpiles of certain precision weapons, including Taurus cruise missiles, they are running out of other key materiel—specifically ammunition. Despite early warnings that ammunition would eventually run low, the European Union has failed to increase its production capabilities, owing to a lack of planning and foresight. At the current rate, the bloc will be unable to fulfill its commitment to provide one million shells and missiles to Ukraine by March 2024. And this lag is having consequences on the ground; whereas Russia uses between 25,000 and 30,000 shells a day, Ukraine fires a meager 7,000 shells a day. Facing critical shortages, Ukrainian troops have been forced to ration their use of ammunition. No NATO government would ever put its military in such a position of having to fight a war without sufficient ammunition, precision weapons, and air support.

Part of the problem is that many European leaders have failed to clearly state an objective for aid to Ukraine, and have instead pursued a vague and often halfhearted strategy of support. Their incremental approach to assistance hasn’t equipped Kyiv to achieve a major breakthrough during Ukraine’s summer offensive. Policymakers within the German government and the Biden administration, in particular, continue to view the delivery of every weapons system through the lens of how Russia will respond, with the fear of escalation constraining what kind of aid Ukraine receives. The reality is that Russia has already fully escalated in terms of its conventional military capabilities and is unlikely to take the nuclear route for two reasons: first, out of fear of U.S. retaliation; and second, given the opposition of China, Russia’s indispensable ally, to nuclear escalation, a clear redline for Beijing. 

Putin must not be allowed to imagine that there is any merit to his heinous invasion; if he triumphs, wars of aggression in Europe may well become more common. From the perspective of Kyiv and its partners, this means that at a minimum Ukraine’s prewar boundaries must be reinstated. Kyiv is not only fighting to regain its territory but also defending the fundamental right of self-determination of states, as well as the largely peaceful order that has prevailed in Europe since the end of World War II. It is a goal that liberal democracies in the West and around the world should be united in supporting—particularly throughout Europe, where war has returned to the continent. 

SHEDDING ILLUSIONS

There is widespread agreement among many observers and policymakers that the war in Ukraine can likely only end with negotiations. A satisfactory agreement, however, will not be achieved from a position of Ukrainian weakness. Given Putin’s track record, there is no reason to believe that a defensive approach by Ukraine and its partners would incentivize Russia to move toward a cease-fire, as some, such as Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, have suggested. Quite the contrary: Putin has made it clear that he does not want to negotiate. He wants to win this war, which has become a matter of his political and personal survival. The war has come at a huge cost for Russia, and Putin must have something to show for it. To assume that he might seize the opportunity to stanch the bloodletting is wishful thinking, and has nothing to do with the Putin who has bombed Ukrainian civilians, helped the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launch a horrendous war against his own people, and overseen a brutal occupation of Chechnya in the early 2000s. Unsurprisingly, his price for even opening negotiations with Kyiv is essentially a total Ukrainian surrender. And in return, he promises nothing. 

Rolling back support for Ukraine would diminish rather than increase Russia’s appetite for negotiations. Putin would gain the upper hand and have no reason to engage in dialogue if he senses the possibility of a military victory. Russia’s expanded military-industrial complex can sustain a years-long war effort; Europe, on the other hand, has not increased its military output and will soon run out of the vital military systems that Ukraine so desperately needs. Knowing this, Putin just needs to wait. Time is on his side. 

The lack of spine shown here by the United States and the EU could have important consequences for the rest of the world. If the West backed down in the face of Putin’s advances, or revealed that it is not capable of substantially ramping up support for Ukraine, such a failure would signal weakness to China and other revisionist powers such as Iran. It would also send a disastrous message to other key allies such as the Philippines and Taiwan, which rely on U.S. military support for their safety and territorial integrity. Shifting to a dedicated offensive strategy and helping Ukraine succeed against Russia would help deter China in the Indo-Pacific and reassure U.S. and EU allies. Every Republican arguing that the United States must focus on China and leave Europe to the Europeans should keep in mind that allowing Russia to triumph in Ukraine would only encourage the worst, most aggressive instincts in Beijing. 

CLEAR EYES, FULL AID

But just as the United States must not waver in its support for Ukraine, Europe must do more to step up and provide for its own defense—especially given the prospect of the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office. In the event that Trump is reelected, Europeans must be able to sustain the Ukrainian war effort on their own. Europeans cannot escape the geography 
of our continent; we are not separated by a vast ocean from the war. Thus, we do not have a choice but to ensure a Ukrainian victory. It is our collective peaceful European order that is under attack by Russia. Although single-handedly supporting Ukraine would be considerably more difficult, it is not impossible. Germany’s GDP alone is almost twice as big as Russia’s; the EU’s as a whole is seven times larger. 

To activate the EU’s potential as a geopolitical player, and to build a sustainable coalition in support of Ukraine, Germany needs to live up to its leadership role in the bloc. It must act as a bridge builder between eastern Europeans who are well aware of the Russian threat close to their borders and western Europeans who feel relatively safe in their homes far away from the Ukrainian frontlines. Although valuable time has been lost, it is not too late for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to act decisively. Scholz has taken some important steps; in 2023, German military support for Ukraine totaled some four billion euros, including weapons systems such as tanks and missile defense systems—a sum that will be doubled in 2024. This large-scale aid is all the more exceptional given Germany’s long-standing pacifism, which has historically led Berlin to refuse to send weapons to conflict zones. But given Germany’s untapped capacity, as well as what a victory for Ukraine and Europe will entail, it is not enough. 

As long as he believes that military success is possible, Putin will refuse to negotiate.

To continue the strikes against Russian infrastructure and supply lines, Ukraine needs cruise missiles such as Taurus systems to hit targets beyond the frontlines, as well as fighter jets to establish air control and air defense to protect its soldiers in the trenches. To date, Germany has withheld Taurus cruise missiles on the grounds that there are still technical challenges that must be resolved in order to restrict the missiles’ range. The real, highly cynical reason for not delivering these weapons is that they are extremely effective, and Scholz fears that the successful use of these weapons could prompt Russian escalation. Although Germany has already delivered several Patriot missile defense systems which now successfully shield the skies above Kyiv, it can and should provide more, at a time when Russia is intensifying its drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. If Berlin feels some consternation regarding the provision of these systems, it must understand that providing Ukraine with all the weapons it needs to wear down and defeat Russian forces is in the security interests of every European state.

Scholz’s biggest shortcoming is that he has remained vague when discussing the West’s objectives in its support for Ukraine. He continues to use an ambiguous formula in which, as he has said, “Russia must not win, Ukraine must not lose.” Scholz must call Russia’s war what it is: an attack on peace in Europe that poses an existential risk to Germany and the continent. This kind of explicit support, polling shows, would be met with widespread approval from the German public. 

CRACKING DOWN

Beyond expanding their military production capacity, Ukraine’s partners can and should do much more to slow down Russia’s arms production, starting with the proper enforcement of their own sanctions regimes. Many of the high-precision machines used in Russia to produce systems such as cruise missiles are U.S. and German products. Russia continues to maintain and purchase these machines. This is possible because German authorities do not properly enforce European sanctions. Russia has often managed to evade restrictions by operating through third countries such as Kyrgyzstan, where German exports have skyrocketed since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022. Once there, exports such as machinery, motor vehicles, and parts—which have gone up by more than 5,000 percent—continue on to Russia. Proper enforcement of EU sanctions, including tailoring them in a way to prohibit such circumvention via third parties, would hamper Russia’s ability to repair, maintain, and procure spare parts for this critical machinery, ultimately slowing Russia’s weapons production.

In addition, U.S. and European policymakers should do far more to target Russia’s main weapons suppliers: North Korea and Iran. Although North Korea is internationally recognized as the pariah state that it is, the Islamic Republic is treated differently by the international community. There is a rationale behind this behavior; the United States and Europe still hope to renegotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, after the Trump administration withdrew from the deal in 2018. But the regime has demonstrated no serious interest in reviving the agreement, having rejected the EU’s proposal for a new deal in 2022. Instead, the Islamic Republic has provided Russia with kamikaze drones since mid-2022, including some 1,700 Shahed drones that year. Russia and Iran have also signed a billion-dollar weapons deal, which aims to build 6,000 drones on a Russian site by 2025. Moreover, the Iranian-made drones used to attack Ukrainian infrastructure and bomb Ukrainian cities are often manufactured using Western components. Washington and Brussels should enact much tougher sanctions on the regime for aiding Russia’s war effort and restrict their own trade with Iran to reduce the chances of delivering commodities that can aid Iran’s drone-making effort. 

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

Because Russian forces have dug deep into trenches and now hide behind miles of mines, much of Ukraine’s war effort no longer takes place along the frontlines. Ukraine now focuses on targeting Russian supply lines and infrastructure within Russian-occupied territory and in Crimea, which holds symbolic importance for the Russian people, especially since Putin annexed the peninsula in 2014. By targeting Putin’s pressure points and aiming to inflict painful defeats on Russia in the Black Sea or in Crimea, Ukraine is hoping to galvanize public sentiment in Russia against the war and its ringleader. Such a shift in public attitudes is a precondition for negotiations; to be willing to talk and compromise, Putin must first be under severe pressure at home. The second precondition is a military one: Putin must also be certain that he can achieve nothing more by force. Ukraine must therefore win the upper hand on the battlefield. 

Forcing Ukraine to negotiate under the current circumstances would destroy all its hopes to align more closely with the West—hopes that are a little brighter after the EU’s decision to approve negotiations toward allowing Kyiv entry into the bloc. Putin will continue to target and destabilize Ukraine through all means available. It was Putin’s fear, after all, of having another flourishing Western country along Russia’s border that propelled him to attack in the first place. A defensive strategy focused solely on dialogue with Russia is at best fundamentally flawed—and at worst catastrophically naive. Such a strategy would lead to a partitioned Ukraine with no hope of joining NATO, as no NATO country would want to risk being drawn directly into a lingering conflict with Russia. Without NATO deterrence, Putin would be free to recover, regroup, and eventually attack again. And Ukraine would not be the only country at risk of a renewed assault; other states such as Moldova and the Baltic countries would be under constant threat, as well. Europe can prevent this nightmare scenario from happening only if it sheds its illusions and wholeheartedly commits to Ukraine’s defense.