Almost 100 days have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine, and it's something of an open secret that this been a military failure. If, at the outset, the objective was to conquer the capital of Kyiv, take down the government, and then take over the collapsing state in a matter of days, the passage of time along with fierce opposition from the Ukrainians has forced the Russians to set out more modest goals. Moscow's stated objective is now to definitively conquer Luhansk and take hold of territories in the south between the port cities of Mariupol and Kherson. In the meantime, the war has slipped away from the headlines, and understandably so: While there are a lot of pinpoint battles taking place along the front, from a news perspective, the front appears to be static.
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This doesn't mean the fighting has halted. It is ongoing, especially in the diplomatic arena. And in this field, the Russians are marking certain achievements.
For weeks, Russia has blocked the export of grains from Ukrainian ports, threatening to create a world hunger crisis unless the world rolls back sanctions. For some Western leaders, this message is being heard loud and clear. Instead of taking a firm stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin's food terrorism, there are those who are willing to pay the ransom through additional Ukrainian territory. Kyiv, however, has rejected any talk of additional concessions and has refused to enter negotiations that do not include a return to its Feb. 24 borders. All Russia wants right now is a brief respite that will allow it to present something of a victory, recover, and then revert to the aggression inherent in Putinism's imperialist DNA.
Russia's second achievement concerns the first, and is also the fruit of internal European division on the question of what to do about the Russian regime. In Europe, there are those who are allies of Putin, for example, in Hungary and Serbia, and there are those who would like to see Putin suffer a defeat – for example in the UK, Poland, the Baltic States, and the EU institutions in Brussels. But there are also Germany and France, who would suffice with denying Putin a win. In other words, Paris and Berlin would prefer a return to the antebellum status quo.
While Germany is funding Ukraine on a mass scale, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is doing everything he can to limit and stall the military aid promised by Berlin to Kyiv. French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, may have authorized the supply of quality Howitzers, but at the same time, he reportedly called for Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyyy to meet Putin halfway to salvage the Russian president's honor. The German-French ambivalence comes to the forefront whenever Ukraine records significant achievements.
Why is this happening? Aside from concerns the Kremlin continues to buy off politicians in Germany and France, as it has in the past, it seems Berlin and Paris are concerned about the strengthening of the EU's eastern flank. Poland has taken in the majority of Ukrainian refugees and has committed to offering them exorbitant conditions, there are no real borders between the countries, and Zelenskyy has promoted legislation that would see Poles in Ukraine afforded equal rights to those of local Ukrainians. Poland and the Baltic states are also the greatest supporters of Ukrainian membership in the EU.
Another problem for Germany and France is that the Eastern European bloc has earned the support of the UK, which has become a central player in redesigning European security. It may be these moves also concern senior officials in Brussels, which is interested in EU integrity, and as a result, have taken a firm stance toward Putin. To date, the divisions have resulted in the stalled supply of equipment to Ukraine and delays in the authorization of a sixth round of sanctions against the Kremlin. In the future, we may even see significant cracks in the EU structure. Just not in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, Ukraine is waiting on the delivery of US arms within the framework of the lend-lease military aid bill. The assessment is that by mid-late July, Kyiv will have enough heavy firepower to switch to wide-scale counterattacks and push the invaders back to the Feb. 24 lines. From Zelenskky's standpoint and the standpoint of all the top officials in Kyiv, a return to those lines would just be the beginning of a process that would include the liberation of the Donbas and the Crimean Peninsula.
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