There’s a key component missing, as we watch NATO chiefs diagnose years of conflict to come, or when we see Boris Johnson fly off to see his new best friend President Zelenksy in Kiev. Putin’s model is the war of attrition he helped the tyrannical Syrian regime wage for a decade, as I wrote about in April. It is on the path to winning this conflict after its disastrous opening campaign. Putin’s Russia is advancing, slowly and murderously perhaps, but nonetheless making ground on its prime target, the Eastern Donbas region. The Western alliance is being told to dig in for the long haul. What’s clear, on both sides of the Atlantic, is the growing realisation that Ukraine could well be Europe’s battleground for years to come. Because to some it sounded like an intentional slip of the tongue. “This is not about regime change in Moscow.” Glad we got that straight. “That was a slip of the tongue by Biden,” he concluded. “You’re in this war already, aren’t you?” I asked, adding that the President himself had said publicly Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. Ukraine could be Europe’s battleground for years to come Then the clarion call became “a weakened Russia” - a telling shift. I recalled that, back in March, the stated goal was to defend Ukraine. Indeed, on the very day we talked, Washington was abuzz with the news that the United States was about to sell Ukraine drones that could be armed with Hellfire missiles, plus rocket systems that could strike well inside Russia. There had been leaks, which looked unmistakeably deliberate to this one-time White House correspondent, revealing that the United States had helped kill Russian Generals, sink a Russian warship, even target military installations across the border in Russia. The Biden team had just announced a package of military aid to the Zelensky government totalling 40 billion dollars, on top of the billions sent at the outset of this war. “We will not be directly engaged in this conflict, period,” said one White House adviser, known to me from his days in the Obama administration.īut hold on, my friend, I responded. Seeing longtime contacts in Washington, D.C., this month, I was struck by the way the United States has joined the war for Ukraine while telling itself that there’s no way it will do so.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |