UK urges US to stick with Ukraine even if counteroffensive is unsuccessful
Joel Gehrke
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President Joe Biden and other Western leaders ought to continue to send military aid to Ukraine “irrespective” of the outcome of an expected counteroffensive, according to the United Kingdom’s top diplomat.
“We need to continue to support them irrespective of whether this forthcoming offensive generates huge gains on the battlefield,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told reporters Tuesday at the State Department. “Because until this conflict is resolved and resolved properly, it is not over.”
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Cleverly has played an outspoken role in making the public case for military aid to Ukraine, particularly in recent months as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak authorized the transfer of main battle tanks to Ukraine — a precedent-setting decision for Western Europe and the United States. With Ukrainian officials anxious that an unimpressive counteroffensive might undercut their case for further aid, Cleverly urged Washington not to lapse into war fatigue.
“We need to recognize that there might not be a simple, quick, decisive breakthrough, and the point that we’ve made in the U.K. is that we have to stick with them,” Cleverly said earlier Tuesday at the Atlantic Council. “Now, I hope and expect they’ll do very, very well because … they’ve outperformed expectations. But we have to be realistic. This is the real world. This is not a Hollywood movie.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken adopted a more decidedly optimistic tone about the impending counteroffensive.
“My own estimation is that they have in place … what they need to continue to be successful in regaining territory that was seized by Russia over the last 14 months,” Blinken said.
Cleverly traveled to the United States as European allies and Russia commemorated the end of World War II in dueling ceremonies. Yet the symbolic gestures existed in uneasy tension with the current conflict; the Kremlin’s traditional showcase of Russian military power featured a single World War II vintage main battle tank, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the European Union’s top politician “to remove the artificial political uncertainty” around Ukraine’s relationship with the Western bloc.
“It is time for a positive decision to launch negotiations on Ukraine’s membership in the European Union,” Zelensky told EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Our values, security, our prosperity, peace on the continent — all of this can be realized to the fullest extent for Europe only together with Ukraine.”
Von der Leyen, describing Ukraine’s capital city as “the beating heart of today’s European values,” pledged to Zelensky the European Union’s “solidarity” would endure for “as long as it takes” — a popular formulation for Western politicians but one that Ukrainian officials and Russia hawks suspect is designed to paper over differences between Western and Ukrainian theories of victory.
“The aggressor has already dramatically failed,” von der Leyen said. “Ukraine has resisted the attack and is fighting back successfully.”
Western politicians, for all the aid that has been given to Ukraine, have a reputation for calibrating their aid deliveries based on fear of Russian retaliation and a desire to back a winner.
“Of course, they are all politicians and are backed by parliaments that agree or disagree on certain things. And behind the parliaments are the voters,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said last week. “Therefore, it will be easier for them to advocate for new assistance packages to Ukraine if there are cases of success.”
The political pressure on aid for Ukraine has been exacerbated by high inflation over the last year, with a senior Kremlin official openly boasting that “food is our weapon” due to the world’s dependence on blockaded Ukrainian grain.
“Of course, there has been an economic impact on people in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom,” Cleverly said. “This is not a byproduct of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is part of the conflict. Economic coercion through their restrictions of hydrocarbons, pinching off the supply of grain to the developing world – this is part of the conflict.”
Still, Blinken dismissed the idea that there is “waning support” for Ukraine in the United States and cited House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) contradiction of a Russian reporter last week as evidence that the support remains bipartisan.
“So the bottom line is these are not zero-sum choices,” he said. “These are responsibilities we have: dealing with challenges we have at home, dealing with challenges we have around the world, and understanding the connections that exist between them.”
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A failure in that effort, Cleverly argued throughout his trip, would prove “more painful and more expensive” for the West in the years to come.
“How we respond to Russia’s attempted full-scale invasion of Ukraine will be viewed, and it will be viewed by observers all over the world — both state and non-state actors, and they will check to see our resolve,” he said at the Atlantic Council. “If we signal to the world that we have only got about 18 months’ worth of staying power, then we create a more dangerous environment for the future.”