Volodymyr Zelensky's goals for returning to the borders since 1991 are unrealistic. Ukraine should go on the defensive and sit down at the negotiating table with Vladimir Putin, US Senator from Ohio James David Vance said in an article for The New York Times.
Republican says Ukraine's math doesn't work out.
By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its valuable manpower, stem the bleeding and buy time to start negotiations. But that would require both the American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Zelensky's stated goals for the war – a return to the 1991 borders – are unrealistic.
The White House has said time and time again that it cannot negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no workable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans face this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker peace, the senator wrote.
Joe Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle to Ukraine is the Republicans (and the blocked $60 billion in aid in Congress). But this is wrong. The biggest hurdle for Kyiv is math. Because the Ukrainians need more people than they can send to the front, and more weapons and ammunition than the US can provide.
$60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the war in Ukraine's favor. Kiev claims that if it had that many, it would like to launch 7 million projectiles a year. We have increased production capacity, but our maximum is 360,000 per year. The good news for Ukraine is that even now the defensive strategy can work. Old-fashioned trenching is what allowed Russia to resist Ukraine's counteroffensive in 2023.
Supporters of US aid to Ukraine argue that our approach is good for our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that make weapons. The idea that we should continue a bloody and terrible war because it was good for American business is grotesque. We can and must rebuild our industrial base without sending weapons into a foreign conflict.