Now that Congress rammed through a huge weapons package for Ukraine, what will Ukraine do with the weapons and how long will they last?
Ukraine’s Real Bottleneck
Ukraine touts Russian casualties, no doubt exaggerated, while Russian published accounts of Russian losses are no doubt understated.
But what about Ukraine’s losses? Those are a military secret.
Despite a full understanding of how bad the situation is in Ukraine, we do know that it’s not a pretty setup. Please consider Ukraine’s Bottleneck.
The main reason why opinion in Washington has shifted over Ukraine is the assessment that the country will lose the war because it does not have enough troops on the ground.
We saw a story in Bild yesterday that would confirm this story line. Of all German newspapers, Bild has been the strongest supporter of Ukraine, so we don’t think we are dealing with a case of news selection bias. We know about shortages. This story goes further. Ukrainian commanders are saying that the bottleneck is no longer western weapons, but people who can use them.
We should not extrapolate that information. They may overstate their case to force a change in policy. For all we know, Russia may have the exact same problems, or worse.
Many young Ukrainian men have left the country to avoid the draft. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been hesitant to order a general draft of all Ukrainians. His government recently suspended consular services for Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 years old, and reduced the age for the draft from 27 to 25 years. There is clearly more they can do. Only 15% of its male population is in active service.
But what made us listen up is the assertion about bottlenecks. It quoted one brigadier general as saying that he used to think that the lack of artillery shells was the biggest problem, but now it was the lack of human resources. The question is whether the general mobilization has been delayed for too long. The problem is not only the headline numbers. If you started a general mobilisation today, you would still not have the numbers of people trained to use the weapons.
Bild quoted Roderich Kiesewetter, a CDU defence expert and a former Bundeswehr general, as saying that the best-trained soldiers in Ukraine had been killed or injured, and those still active have been deployed without a break for two years. Exhaustion is becoming a factor in this war. He said Ukraine was lacking a predictable recruitment strategy. Another expert, from the Munich Security Conference, also believes that the right response is to start the draft immediately.
We are more sceptical. Young Ukrainians men who live abroad have means to resist a draft. EU countries cannot just deport them without recourse to legal processes. Nor will all EU countries want to do that. An army of draft dodgers who experienced the comfortable life abroad, and who are recruited against their will, are not going to win this war. Zelensky could lower the age of the draft to 18. But you would be training an essentially new army from scratch in the middle of a war.
So then, we ask, what is the strategy? That is also a question for the western countries that support Ukraine, who don’t have any strategy whatsoever.
