Russian President Vladimir Putin could win the war in Ukraine “on the battlefield by the end of 2024” if Congress continues to withhold military assistance, according to CIA Director Bill Burns.
“Without supplemental assistance, the picture is a lot more dire,” Burns said Thursday at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Texas. “There is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024 — or at least put Putin in a position where you could essentially dictate the terms of a political setup.”
Ukrainian forces have taken increasingly heavy losses in eastern Ukraine in recent months, as a political impasse between President Joe Biden and House Republicans caused a protracted lapse in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Burns maintained that Ukrainian forces can thwart Putin if they receive an influx of aid, not least because of their ability to target Russian forces in Crimea.
“I think Ukrainians can hold their own on the battlefield in 2024 and continue to do damage with deeper strikes in Crimea, which the Russians are occupying right now,” the CIA chief said. “And against the Black Sea Fleet, where the Ukrainians have sunk sixteen warships in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet just over the last six months.”
Those strikes have caused anxiety in some quarters of the Biden administration, as some U.S. officials fear that Putin would use nuclear weapons to retain Crimea. Burns, for his part, argued that the war in Ukraine has wide-ranging ramifications for U.S. interests.
“I think in the first year or two of the war … [Chinese General Secretary] Xi Jinping, and China, were sobered a little bit by what he saw,” Burns said, referring to Russia’s unforeseen struggles and NATO’s willingness to sustain the costs of support to Ukraine. “As he looked at Taiwan contingencies and a lot of his other ambitions, that had an impact. The surest way to undo that impact is for us to be seen to be walking away from the Ukrainians right now.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has scheduled a long-awaited vote on legislation to authorize new aid to Ukraine, but he faces a potential mutiny from hard-right lawmakers who have threatened to oust him in order to block the bill.
“We know what the timetable is, we know the urgency in Ukraine,” Johnson said Wednesday. “We have to project to Putin, Xi, and Iran, and North Korea, and anybody else that we will defend freedom. It doesn’t mean boots on the ground, we’re not the world’s policeman, but we have to do the right thing.”
In parallel, U.S. allies in Europe are trying to coordinate the provision of additional air defense systems for Ukraine.
“We have compiled data about the different air defense systems we have in NATO, focused on the Patriot systems,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at the G7 foreign ministerial summit in Capri, Italy. “And we are working with Allies to ensure that they redeploy some of their systems to Ukraine — Germany had already made a decision — and also came to how to mobilize funding for financing deployments of air defense systems to Ukraine.”
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Burns paired his warning with an optimistic statement about Ukraine’s prospects if they receive the aid.
“So with the boost that would come from military assistance, both practically and psychologically, Ukrainians are entirely capable of holding their own through 2024 — and puncturing Putin’s arrogant view that time is on his side,” he said.