Ukraine Can’t Win If It Can’t Shoot Back

The Biden administration should let Ukraine target Russia’s war industry.

Soldiers from the Ukrainian 63rd Brigade are shooting artillery rounds on the Russian positions from 2S3 Akatsiya, a Russian-made self-propelled howitzer of 152 caliber as Russia-Ukraine war continues in Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on April 13, 2024. Due to a lack of ammunition, they fire only a few times a day and mostly wait. (Photo by Wojciech Grzedzinski/Anadolu via Getty Images)

IT’S BAD ENOUGH THAT U.S. MILITARY assistance to Ukraine has been delayed for months in the House of Representatives. The Biden administration’s recent rebuke of the way Ukraine is defending itself against Russia’s ongoing military onslaught is making matters even worse.

Despite strong, bipartisan congressional support for helping Ukraine, uncertainty over when, or even whether, the House will vote on a Ukraine aid bill has compelled Ukrainian forces to husband the weapons and ammunition that they have. Every day of delay is deadly for Ukrainians, and the battlefield situation is increasingly fraught. Encouraged by the nearly seven-month delay in passing the aid package and their resulting advantage in firepower, the Russians are pushing hard at multiple points along Ukrainian lines of defense.

The current situation heightens the imperative that Congress pass the Ukraine aid package immediately and the Department of Defense expedite delivery of artillery ammunition and air defense interceptors, among other desperately needed military capabilities, to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians can win—but only if they can shoot back.

Even if the logistical constraints on shooting back are resolved, however, the political constraints will remain a bone of contention between Washington and Kyiv. This discord risks adding American insult to Ukraine’s injury.

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SINCE THE EARLY DAYS of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, American senior leaders made clear their disapproval of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory. Yet such attacks have increased in recent weeks as the Ukrainians have waged a campaign against both Russian oil refineries and, more recently, air bases.

On March 20, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Kyiv to deliver a message of reassurance to President Zelensky about continued U.S. support despite the hold-up of a supplemental aid package in Congress. Two days later, the Financial Times reported that Sullivan’s reassurance may have been a bit more conditional than his public comments suggested. Zelensky himself confirmed in a late March interview that Washington had registered concern that Ukrainian attacks, which have taken an estimated 14 percent of Russian refining capacity offline, might lead to increased gasoline prices (not timely for Biden in an election year) and could lead to Russian retaliation against Ukrainian energy infrastructure—a strange fear, considering Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for years.

American reservations about Ukrainian attacks on targets (energy or military) became public in early April, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in response to a question about Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, “It has been our view and policy from day one when it comes to Ukraine to do everything we possibly can to help Ukraine defend itself against this Russian aggression. At the same time, we have neither supported nor enabled strikes by Ukraine outside of its territory.”

That same day, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julie Smith responded to the same question by saying, “In terms of actually going after targets inside Russia, that is something that the United States is not particularly supportive of.” More recently, administration witnesses have suggested in Congressional testimony that oil refineries are civilian targets and that, despite Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the authorities in Kyiv should hold themselves to a higher standard.

Since the full-scale invasion, the United States has conditioned its provision of certain capabilities—HIMARS, cluster and loitering munitions, UAVs, etc.—on Ukrainian assurances that they not be used in attacks on Russia proper. These recent comments by U.S. officials, coming as they did during a lengthy pause in which the United States has provided only de minimis assistance (most of it timed to coincide with Sullivan’s visit to Kyiv), seems to indicate the emergence of an even more restrictive attitude by the United States towards Kyiv’s military operations.

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THE ADMINISTRATION’S CRITICISM of Ukraine’s successful operations seems to represent the triumph of some perverted form of “escalation management” over any kind of serious strategy for Ukraine, let alone full and public support for Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat. It represents the victory of those inside the administration who foolishly believe they can fine tune the scope and span of violence with a 5,000-mile screwdriver from Washington. Some in the administration have clearly allowed cheap words from the likes of Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev to distract them from the strategic realities on the ground. Self-deterrence is not escalation management; it’s capitulation.

The policy of prohibiting Ukraine from doing what it needs to win for fear of Russian escalation is tactically unsound, strategically bankrupt, legally dubious, and morally squalid.

What the Biden administration seems to misunderstand is that war is dangerous and ugly. There are two ways to force Putin to cease his invasion and withdraw his occupying forces. One is to force the Russians back across the border with bullets and bombs, as Ukraine has every right to do. The second, which is mutually supporting, is to destroy key elements of Putin’s war industry, both to starve Russian forces of materiel and fuel and to contribute to the Russian anti-war movement by causing the Russian people to feel the type of pain their military is inflicting on Ukraine.

The United States did not defeat Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan by focusing solely on the front lines. Victory in World War II was achieved in part by reducing our enemies’ war-making potential (including petroleum supplies), thereby both undermining enemy morale and reducing the efficacy of their front-line forces.

Furthermore, the argument that oil refineries inside Russia are not legitimate targets is legally and strategically flawed. By any definition, Russia is waging a war of aggression, and Ukraine is entitled under article 51 of the UN Charter to defend itself from that aggression. Military airbases and military production facilities inside Russia are clearly legitimate targets, as are the petroleum refineries that provide the economic lifeblood of the Russian war machine, which has reconstituted itself faster than our intelligence community or policy leaders anticipated. Unless Ukraine can bring the reality of war home to Russian leaders and the Russian people, there is no way in the short-to-medium term for Ukraine to impose costs on Russia that might change Moscow’s strategic calculus.

Finally, that Americans would lecture Ukrainians about the dangers of escalation while the latter are locked in an existential struggle—while our assistance is dangerously stalled—is no doubt galling to Zelensky and his colleagues as well as the average Ukrainian citizen. For Americans who support Ukraine in its heroic resistance to what Jake Sullivan referred to as “the imperial onslaught of the Russians,” this misplaced devotion to the illusion that Washington, in its infinite wisdom, can exercise escalation control from its pristine perch far above the mud and blood of the battlefield, is simply morally bankrupt.