Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, and Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, are members of the U.S. Senate.
In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration gave Congress its assessment of Ukraine’s ability to hold back Russian forces. The projection was bleak. Kyiv, they said, would fall in weeks, if not sooner.
Yet, the Russian tanks that attempted to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government were either destroyed or forced to retreat. By April, not only had Putin failed to install a friendly government in Kyiv, his military couldn’t secure a foothold anywhere near Ukraine’s capital. Instead, Ukraine successfully confined Russia’s troops to the far east of their country, where Russia has tried to steal territory since 2015.
After almost four years of fighting, Russia has lost about a third of its strategic bombers, and it continues to lose equipment at significantly higher rates than Ukraine. It is Russia that has borne more than 1 million casualties, dead and wounded, in grinding battles of its own making. Pundits who predicted a quick Ukrainian defeat were wrong in 2022, and they are wrong today.
Along the way, Republicans and Democrats alike criticized the Biden administration’s excessive caution in refusing to provide Ukraine the weapons it needed, when they could have made the biggest difference. It is more than plausible that the Ukrainians could have achieved a decisive victory and lasting peace if they were simply granted the fighter jets, air defenses and long-range weapons when they initially requested them from President Joe Biden. But American assistance was often too little, too late.
In prolonging Putin’s aggression, this hesitation also gave China, Iran, North Korea and other nations working together to undermine American interests new reasons to doubt our credibility and strength.
Fortunately, the opportunity for President Donald Trump to end this conflict on favorable terms for Ukraine, America and the West has not passed. But he must not continue to make the same miscalculation that his predecessor made in 2022.
Administration officials say that the “fall” of the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk is a bellwether for what’s to come for Ukraine. Yet, Pokrovsk, whose population was only around 60,000 even before the war, has yet to fall. And in the entire year and a half that the Russians have spent trying to take this relatively small city, their minuscule gains have come at staggering material and human costs.
Russians are paying an extraordinary economic price in pursuit of Putin’s lust for glory and blood. Russian oil and gas revenue have fallen more than 30 percent due to attacks on its energy infrastructure. The Kremlin has been selling gold to stabilize its finances and shield elites from the true cost of Putin’s war. And roughly a quarter of Russian companies are now bankrupt or at risk. Russia cannot afford the war it is fighting, but it can prolong it.
Putin may be playing for time, but he is not dragging out this conflict because it is his preferred tactic. He is dragging it out because he cannot achieve a decisive victory. He’s hoping that slow, grinding attrition will divide the West.
Instead, the United States must stand with European allies investing heavily in their own defense and far exceeding American support to Ukraine. If there are economic fruits of peace, they lie in cooperation with an innovative, Western-oriented Ukraine and a resurgent Europe, not in a bankrupt, backward Russia.
Envoy Steve Witkoff has been to Moscow six times since the administration took office and worked to get Putin an invitation to the U.S. Yet, just as the Russians have barely moved in their ground offensive against Ukraine, they have not moved an inch in negotiations with the U.S.
It is fair to ask what the U.S.’s endgame should be. Wars end when leverage changes. If the U.S. and its allies want a negotiated end, the only proven, viable path is to strengthen Ukraine’s position, not to weaken it. Abandoning Ukraine or granting Russia what it cannot win on the battlefield will not bring lasting peace. Putin wants more than Donbas — he denies Ukrainian sovereignty outright. And his ambitions extend to the Baltic states and other nations once held captive by the Soviet empire.
Congress has an array of bipartisan tools to increase pressure on Putin. In October, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced measures to tighten sanctions enforcement, restrict Chinese support for Russia’s war machine and authorize transferring frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine. The Trump administration’s recent sanctions against Lukoil and Rosneft have had a profound effect, but much more is required.
Additional investment in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — which received overwhelming bipartisan support in the National Defense Authorization Act and the Senate’s defense appropriations, and which is spent here at home to reconstitute America’s defense industrial capacity — would bolster European contributions and help ensure Ukraine has the air defenses, long-range weapons and industrial support needed to sustain a position of strength.
Putin is betting the U.S. will talk itself into believing Ukraine cannot succeed. The past four years show the opposite. Ukraine has defied every expectation, including our own. Kyiv is not losing, and Moscow is not winning. It is up to Washington to match Ukraine’s resolve with the clarity this moment demands.
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