Biden's policies on Ukraine were often right, but always late.
Trying to pressure Ukraine to lower the mobilization age to 18 was a good idea - in 2022. Today it is a cruel folly and, like so many of Biden’s policies on Ukraine, late.
BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN
Ukrainians dislike U.S. President Joe Biden in a different way than they dislike President-elect Donald Trump. While they fear that Trump will happily hand over their country to Vladimir Putin, they dislike Biden for helping them but always helping them with too little, too late.
As a friend in Kharkiv, a 54-year-old university teacher named Olena, told me this week, “I think that Biden wants to help us. His heart is in the right place, but he is always too slow. Ultimately, it always looks like he is not convinced that we matter that much.”
Her husband, Serhiy: “Yes, Biden always repeats that he is with us for as long as it takes, but when we ask for this or that weapon to defend ourselves, it always arrives a long time after we need it. Like those ATACMs, everybody is talking about now. At first, we called Biden’s hesitant policy ‘the slow yes,’ now here in Kharkiv we call it ‘the slow death’.”
By the end of 2024, almost three years into Putin’s invasion, Ukraine is caught in a downward military-political-societal spiral: Western hesitance, even slipping commitment, Russian military advances and terror bombing, corruption in their own government and army, desertions - the combination of all these ailments have resulted in the average Ukrainian losing the belief that Ukraine can win the war and expel the Russian army from its soil and secure its borders from 1992. As was the goals explicitly stated by both Ukraine and the West when Putin invaded in February 2022. Against this backdrop, Biden’s latest ‘policy’ - to try to pressure Ukraine to lower its draft age from 25 to 18 - demonstrates an almost unfathomable lack of timing.
Lateness cost lives. Ukrainian lives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has, through 2024, been increasingly vocal about the delays in the delivery of already promised U.S. weapons:
“The delays have cost Ukrainian soldiers their lives,” a bitter Zelensky has repeated, “the Russian troops are laughing at us and hunting us down.”
In the scope of 2024, relations between the Biden White House and Zelensky have steadily deteriorated. And in late October, Zelensky – clearly exasperated with his American counterparts - claimed that Ukraine had so far only received 10% of the weapons from the famous $61 billion packages approved back in April.
It is difficult to avoid the feeling that Biden has been, sure, well-meaning when it comes to Ukraine, but also that the president consistently has been late and often demonstrated really awful timing.
Last week’s long-awaited OK for Ukraine to use ATACMs and Storm Shadow missiles to strike Russian military forces and equipment far into Russia is by many in Ukraine seen as only the latest examples of Western foot-dragging, rendering what could and should have been an important strengthening of Ukraine’s defense much less so. The debate about allowing Ukraine to use these powerful Western weapons has been going on within the Western alliance for almost one year - and has been going on very much in public; the Ukrainians were, in fact, given the missile systems more than one year ago, but not allowed to use them on Russian soil. And many military experts now say that what could earlier have been a game changer by now has lost much of its effect, seeing that the Russian army logically has moved a lot of its weaponry further back into Russia, out of reach of Ukraine’s ATACMs.
"Every decision is late by around one year," Zelensky complained last May.
And in September, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged that “Russia has by now moved 90% of its aircraft used to attack Ukraine outside of a 300 kilometers zone from the Ukrainian border.”
Corruption also costs lives
The Western hesitance—with the U.S., Germany, the UK, and France as the main culprits—has only been one factor in Ukraine's downward spiral; another factor has been the corruption that Ukrainians still see as their country’s biggest problem—incredibly, even now in the middle of a war fighting for their very survival.
A recent poll illustrates the terrible situation that 70% of Ukrainians increasingly see corruption weighing down the very war effort and defence of their country against Putin’s attack; they believe that people in their own country’ government is actually profiteering from the war, “a striking uptick from a year ago, when only 43 percent of respondents shared this opinion. Ukrainians are increasingly associating corruption in government with the military, which has more opportunities to engage in corrupt schemes, such as arms trade or evasion of mobilization.”
It doesn’t get much worse than this. Consider the situation: Your country is fighting for its very survival, and the government is asking, sometimes ordering, sometimes even physically coercing people to fight. But at the same time, the majority of the population now believes that some in the same government are stealing from the state budgets—and thus sending soldiers into the battlefield less equipped and protected than they could and should have been.
Throughout 2024, Ukraine has been hit by a long string of draft dodging and corruption scandals – with many hundreds of military doctors, officers, and even state prosecutors involved. Last week, Zelensky described it as “truly an internal enemy”.
Mobilization mess
A third factor in this downward spiral has been Zelensky’s non-transparent and messy mobilization policy. At the same time, some men in the military draft age (25-60) are hunted down by the police and physically forced to enlist (often with ‘accompanying’ brutal and heart-wrenching phone videos published online by family members), others more wealthy Ukrainians bribe their way out of the army and often even out of the country. One of the favorite sentences of J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice president-elect, has been that “the nath on Ukraine doesn’t add up” – basically that the West can help Ukraine all we want with weapons, but if the country’s government is not securing enough and adequately-trained soldiers to use them, there is little point in providing Ukraine with western weaponry for billions.
My co-grumper on this blog, Brian Bonner, recently analyzed the issue. “Many experts believe the manpower shortage is now as critical for Ukraine as the need for more weapons,” Bonner wrote. He quoted the former CIA Director General Petraeus: “The single biggest factor I think going forward is going to be their ability to do something they’ve not done so far in this war, and that is to do very substantial conscription.”
In mid-2024, Ukraine finally lowered the military draft age from 27 to 25 after more than a year of hesitancy. But Bonner puts this into a striking perspective: “The policy still leaves Ukraine’s army with an average age of 43, much higher than other nations. Russia, to take the most relevant example, is among many countries that draft men at 18. And while there is no military draft in the U.S., American troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars often served in combat at the ages of 19-21.”
Add to this that more than one million Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since February 2022, when Russia invaded. Stories of perfectly able men bribing their way out of military service abound and are hugely demoralizing - and damaging for Ukraine’s prospects. Between 40,000 and 60.000 soldiers have deserted in 2024 alone, more than 100,000 since the invasion began.
There is a real danger that draft dodging will develop a social schism that Ukraine simply cannot afford. I have 1,500+ Ukrainian ‘friends’ on Facebook, and the discrepancy between their lives is mind-numbing; some are risking life and limbs at the front, fighting for their country, many without leave for almost three years by now - while others are posting cute snaps from Kyiv’s cool cafes or beach holidays in Western Europe. Implausibly, more than one million Ukrainian men have been exempt from fighting, because their jobs are deemed ‘strategically important to the economy’.
A personal story illustrates the dilemma Ukrainians are put in: A friend of mine from Lviv, we can call him Ihor, is himself a former high-ranking officer in the Ukrainian army, serving in some of harshest battles in Donbas in 2014-15, where he was wounded. Until recently, he was an army weapons instructor. He is also a father of two sons, aged 26 and 27. For almost one year now, his sons have been hiding in the family’s little flat, only venturing outside briefly at night, with their parents making sure that no drafting police are around. “Yes, I am a Ukrainian patriot,” Ihor tells me, “but I know in detail the state of the so-called training our army recruits receive, not to talk about the equipment and the level of our field officers. I feel bad about helping my boys to dodge the draft, but the real culprits are the corrupt and incompetent politicians.”
Ukraine losses on the battlefield
Add to that that in anticipation of Donald Trump being true to his word and forcing Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table at the very beginning of 2025, Putin has intensified his attacks on Ukraine to secure Russia the best possible negotiating position.
Russia is upping its attacks in two ways: the last couple of months, Russian has made more progress on the battlefield in the east than at any other point since the very beginning of the war almost three years ago, day by day ‘eating’ its way westwards into Ukraine, very slowly but constantly. And at enormous human costs that only a dictatorship can ignore; according to Ukrainian estimates that has been accepted by the British ministry of defence as reliable, this Autumn, Russia has on average incurred daily loses of 1,200-1,500 killed and wounded soldiers. And this this past week, Russian losses went up to more than 2,000 a day.
And since Summer, so for already six months, Russia has been intensifying its bombing campaign of Ukrainian cities, in the shape of both pure terror bombings of apartment blocks and houses, as well as specifically gunning for Ukraine’s power grid.
The aim is evidently to make Ukraine unliveable; on top of the very real fear of dying, Ukrainians in many cities are now looking at being without electricity for maybe 15 or 20 hours a day over the winter. As a result, both Ukrainian government agencies, as well as Western governments, are now bracing themselves for another wave of refugees, maybe as many as one million, to add to the already 7 million Ukrainian refugees abroad and 4 million internally displaced.
100,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers?
At the end of November, The Economist published a thorough analysis based on Ukraine’s official numbers for killed and wounded, compared with intelligence estimates and defense officials - and the numbers are devastating: Between 60,000 to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war so far. And a further 400,000 have been wounded. For obvious reasons, the Ukrainian government doesn’t reveal the full extent of its military casualties; in fact, the last time President Zelensky discussed the topic in public was back in February when he admitted that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed at that point.
In September, the Wall Street Journal published similar estimates - that Ukraine had lost 80,000 soldiers killed and 400,000 wounded. WSJ then estimated Russia's losses at up to 200,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.
“Almost one in 20 Ukrainian fighting-age men have been killed or injured because of the war”, The Economist writes. Experts estimate that between one-and-a-half and two million Ukrainians have served in army at some war during the last three years - this makes the risk of being killed or wounded an incredible one in three or one in four.
Ukrainians losing faith
The result has been that by the end of 2024, Ukraine is caught in a downward military-political-societal spiral: slipping Western commitment, Russian military advances and terror bombing, corruption in their government and army, and desertion - have, in combination, led to the average Ukrainian losing heart and belief in Ukraine winning the war. A recent Gallup poll shows stark - very, very stark - changes in how Ukrainians view the war and the future.
(Gallup surveys of Ukraine, conducted in August and October 2024)
The war fatigue is now evident, Gallup points out: “Some of the biggest declines in support for continuing fighting have been in regions far from the front line, including Kyiv (down 39%) and Western Ukraine (down 40%). Among Ukrainians living in the East, more than twice as many people now want the war to end as soon as possible (63%) rather than continue (27%).”
Half of the Ukrainians who favor negotiating a quick end to the war also believe Ukraine should be open to ceding some territory in exchange for peace.
“Do you want our young people to die without your weapons?”
All those depressing facts bring us back to good old Joe Biden, no doubt at heart a long-term friend of Ukraine, but also a man with consistently poor political timing. For Ukraine watchers, the sad election saga in the U.S. was all old hat: Biden stepping down with beautiful words supporting Kamala Harris as the Democrat candidate - but doing it all too late. And thereby already having rendered her an ineffective candidate with little prospect of winning. Too little, too late. Now let’s translate that to Ukraine: instead of Harris, read new potentially potent weapons for Ukraine, and for Trump, read Putin. Ukrainians have watched this film on a loop since February 2022.
(Financial Times, November 28, 2024)
And, true to form, after Ukraine being caught in this downward spiral since summer - losing both hope and increasingly the will to fight - last week Biden then decided to end his relationship with the Ukrainians with a (sorry, Joe) bizarre move. This time the U.S. president actually managed to be both late and insensitive: He demanded that Ukraine lovers each mobilisation age to 18. This move would - for all the reasons discussed above - have made great political sense two years ago - when the Ukrainian army was on the front foot militarily, pushing back the Russians all over Ukraine. At that point, Ukrainians were enthusiastically signing up. Today, suggesting that Ukraine lower its draft age to 18 is politically stillborn, irrelevant at best, some would even say disrespectful.
To make matters even more bizarre, officials in the Biden administration now used - word for word - the same argumentation as J.D. Vance had done in April - the one about “the math on Ukraine doesn’t add up.” I kid you not: “The pure math of Ukraine’s situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight,” officials in the Biden administration had been instructed to tell The Associated Press.
Biden‘s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan - almost as disliked in Ukraine as his boss (and seemingly without Biden’s heart for Ukraine) - explained that the biggest problem in the war was the lack of manpower: “Our view has been that there’s not one weapon system that makes a difference in this battle. It’s about manpower, and Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines,” Sullivan said on PBS News Hour last week.
The German government quickly disassociated itself from the White House: “Frankly, we as Germans would not interfere in how Ukraine conducts its defensive struggle against the Russians.”
For anybody who follows Ukrainian politics, it is evident that the U.S. suggestion has zero chance of being accepted - not by Zelensky nor the Ukrainian parliament, never mind the population. Earlier this year, when Ukraine lowered the military draft age from 27 to 25, it took more than a year to get that through the political process. Ukraine’s minister of defense, Rustem Umerov, admitted that the topic is “toxic” (his words) and that political colleagues had strongly warned him to drop the issue - “It’s better to drink the water from Chernobyl, rather than touch this topic.”
And now, after an autumn with one disaster after another, the Biden administration wanted Zelensky to send the country’s 18-year-olds to fight? At the very time when Ukrainians' belief that the war can be won is tumbling down, and many even believe that their own government’s corruption is hurting the army?
The Ukrainian government's response was swift. Zelensky's communications advisor said what the Biden government is asking simply makes no sense.
(Tweet by Dmytro Lytvyn, Zelensky’s communications advisor)
A couple of days later, his Ukrainian president's boss was more forthright: “Some leaders told me you need younger [conscription age]. I said: what do you want them to do? Zelensky said to die without your weapons?, in an interview with Sky News. “We will handle our part, but we ask our partners to fulfill theirs.’
Predictably, the Ukrainian internet was awash in angry comments. Some even suggested that Biden was rewriting history, trying to deflect his own shortcomings and lateness onto Ukraine. And my friends in Kharkiv were unimpressed.
“Biden’s suggestion to lower the draft age no longer makes sense; our president is right,” said my friends, the middle-aged university teacher couple from Kharkiv, Olena and Serhei. And God knows that Zelensky is not right about much anymore.” Only last month did they pay to have their own son smuggled over the border to Poland.
“Why should our son - with his whole life ahead of him - pay for the incompetence and corruption of politicians here and abroad?”, his mother asks.
They don’t want to tell me the price or whom they paid. “But it was expensive,” Elena admits. Her husband tells me a joke he heard at the local market that morning. ‘Anecdotes’, as the Ukrainians call them, flourished in Soviet times and were a way of people letting out anger and frustration with the oppression and the lies and propaganda, playing on the often bizarre discrepancies in what was said and what was done. For a while, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, they almost disappeared.
“The war in Ukraine ends in March 2025, and a ceasefire agreement is signed. Putin takes 20% of Ukraine. At the next presidential election in the U.S., in 2028, Donald Trump Junior is the Republican candidate. His friend Putin joins him on the campaign trail. “My dad ended the war in Ukraine, you can trust me,” is Trump Jr.'s election slogan. The Democratic candidate is 86-year-old Joe Biden. His election slogan is: “I will end the war in Ukraine; you can trust me.”
“If nothing else,” Serhiy laughs, “it felt good to hear an anecdote again. Maybe there is still life left in us Ukrainians. I am looking forward to hearing what anecdotes they will have at the market next weekend.”
Stupid is what stupid does. I always knew Zelensky was going to get people slaughtered so he could get rich quickly and betray his nation. Biden is just senile, braindead, and as corrupt as Zelensky.
Syria might be the gift Ukraine needs.