[Skybird]

comment in the NZZ: https://www.nzz.ch/international/tru...eln-ld.1827299

Google translator has some fun with it, I cannot help it, DeepL has much better quality but is too limited in text size.

The urgently needed military aid from the USA is finally flowing back into Ukraine. Next week, the necessary formal decisions must be made in the Senate and the White House, but then it will only be a few days before the well-organized American military logistics can hand over the first ammunition deliveries to Ukraine. They will immediately use the exhausted and badly pressed Ukrainian soldiers against the overwhelming enemy at the front.

Without the new American weapons and ammunition supplies, the collapse and destruction of the vast Eastern European country under the brutal Russian war machine would only be a matter of time. This weekend's political breakthrough in Washington is a positive surprise after months of delaying tactics by Republican politicians. The Western world can celebrate it for a brief moment, but it is too early to breathe a sigh of relief and sit back for two reasons.

First, US political support for the Ukrainian defense struggle remains precarious. It is not even completely clear what made the positive turnaround in Congress possible. The negotiating skills of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson in the House of Representatives played an important role. He himself opposed the aid for a long time. But now, presumably under the impression of the devastating reports of Russian advances and Ukrainian desperation at the front, he recognized that the time had come for a rethink - and promoted this with discreet skill. However, he was in no way directed against former President Donald Trump, but rather achieved his approval of a repackaged, but practically identical, support package for Ukraine that the same Trump had previously torpedoed for months.

The episode shows: Without Trump, nothing works for the Republicans. And Trump's unpredictability and purely transactional political thinking for his own benefit can only mean one thing for Ukraine: there are no guarantees for the future. The fact that Trump allowed himself to be persuaded to provide aid this time probably has something to do with the fact that he wanted to prevent a quick defeat before election day in November in order to maintain his own campaign promise of a peace deal that he had negotiated “within 24 hours”. That says nothing about what he will decide next time.

But support for Ukraine remains volatile not only with Trump, but also in the wider political Washington. On Saturday, more than half of the Republicans still voted against the aid package; the ratio was similar in the Senate. Thanks to the Democrats, it was enough for a clear yes, but resistance remains strong among the Republicans. And over the last two years, President Biden has always struggled to deliver American weapons systems to Ukraine quickly and decisively enough. Rocket launchers, tanks, fighter planes, ammunition - everything always came too late and too sparsely for Ukraine to gain a decisive advantage at the front. There is nothing to suggest that this will change now.

The second reason for only cautious joy in Washington about the breakthrough is Russia's structural superiority in the war, which is causing so much trouble for Ukraine. The huge country, with a population around three times its size, has enormous resources that it can throw into war. Unlike Kiev, there is a dictator in Moscow. Vladimir Putin can politically afford to send hundreds of thousands of mostly impoverished citizens into a senseless and murderous war from which many will not return.

And he has the power to gamble away the future of the Russian economy by pushing a war economy into high gear in the safe Russian hinterland. Every week it spits out artillery shells, drones, rockets, tanks and guns, which are immediately thrown onto the Ukrainian front. The hope shared by many military strategists at the beginning of the war that the Russian military assets would be slowly depleted over the years by the enormous wear and tear of the war has not been fulfilled.

Both factors, domestic political volatility in the United States and Russia's strategic superiority, can only mean one thing for Ukraine's European allies: they must not let up. The country is on the brink of defeat due to a lack of ammunition and modern weapons systems. The $60 billion from the USA is a big relief, but it won't be enough.

The most urgent thing is to strengthen air defense. The fact that Ukraine still exists as a state is primarily due to the fact that Russia has never managed to achieve absolute air superiority. But Putin's war machine is now approaching this state. The brutal consequences can be seen at the front, where the Ukrainians have been in a gradual retreat for months under the merciless bombardment of the Russians. But they can also be seen in the former city of Kharkiv, which was apparently made uninhabitable by the targeted bombing, and in the targeted destruction of the power supply throughout the country. Last week, Germany promised the rapid delivery of another Patriot air defense system. More are urgently needed, including ammunition.

The first F-16 fighter jets from Western European stocks are expected to follow in the spring, but their number is far too small for them to make a significant difference. Here too, Europe can do more. The most important thing, however, is that in the European capitals and Washington the realization prevails not only in rhetoric, but also in actions: the thirty-year era of peace and détente in Europe has unfortunately come to an end.

Under the pressure of Putin's Russian imperialism, the USA and the Western European states must immediately invest a lot more money in their own defense. The West needs many more artillery shells, drones, air defense systems, guns, tanks, ammunition and electronic warfare systems. This will be an expensive, ongoing task. The implementation of this unpopular insight is only beginning to be visible.