We hear this refrain a lot these days: “America is only prolonging the war by helping Ukraine. We need diplomacy.”
To Ukrainian ears, however, the term “diplomacy” sounds like a euphemism for “Ukraine surrendering and ceasing to exist.”
Of course, there is an honest question behind this refrain: why can’t Ukraine seek peace with Russia?
But the question could be rephrased as follows: why not cede vast swathes of sovereign territory to a brutal and corrupt regime? Why not stay out of NATO, allow Russian sanctions to be lifted, create a demilitarized zone (sacrificing more territory, of course), and aspire to mutual trust?
The answers are obvious, given the reality on the ground and in the fevered mind of Vladimir Putin, particularly this week, after Russia bombed the children’s hospital in kyiv in a massive daylight missile attack that killed at least 39 people in Ukraine.
For a decade, Russian President Putin has been playing beautifully on the West’s fear of a European war. The West first caved in to his threats and stubbornly kept Ukraine out of NATO (God forbid we start a war!), making the 2014 invasion and the full-scale war that begins in 2022 inevitable. Ukraine was excluded from the world’s most effective defense alliance and left vulnerable to major aggression, which is exactly what the Kremlin wanted.
Since then, “escalation management” exercises and drastic restrictions on military aid to Ukraine have failed to bring reason to Putin, who is waging the largest European war of aggression since Adolf Hitler. On the contrary, these restrictions have denied Ukraine a chance to disable Russia and have enabled a protracted war of attrition.
Half-measures of support have helped Putin recover from his military’s initial failure in northern Ukraine, adapt to sanctions, make the war profitable for his elites, find allies and new markets, and prepare Russia for perpetual war.
Until very recently, Ukraine was strictly forbidden from using Western weapons to attack military targets on Russian territory, a red line that effectively tied Ukraine’s hands. Did the Kremlin appreciate this gesture? Yes, the Russian military used its safe haven status to prepare new offensives and devastating bombing campaigns without encountering any resistance.
Starting last fall, the chorus demanding a “diplomatic solution” grew louder within the ignorant right in the United States, and defense aid stalled for six critical months in Congress, creating a gargantuan shortage of ammunition in the Ukrainian military.
The lack of American aid has not helped to hasten the cessation of hostilities or to bring about the “compromise” that Putin hypocritically speaks of in his periodic ultimatums of surrender to Ukraine.
On the contrary, it precipitated the tragic loss of the city of Avdiivka by Ukraine to the Russians in early 2024, as well as Moscow’s spring offensive in Kharkiv. The Ukrainian front line did not fall, as many had predicted, thanks to the bravery and inventiveness of the Ukrainian army.
Russia responded to the delay in US aid by tripling its missile attacks on Ukraine’s electricity and heating infrastructure, exploiting Ukraine’s underequipped air defenses. Today, the lion’s share of Ukraine’s energy production and distribution system is destroyed. Ukrainians spend most of the day without electricity, and only God knows what nightmare awaits us next winter.
Washington’s policymakers continue to follow the same dangerous script. Ukraine asks for weapons, and the response comes back: Providing this or that munition or missile system would cross a red line and cause an escalation. Months of deliberations ensue; the situation in Ukraine worsens. Permission is granted late, and the weapons—artillery, armored vehicles, rocket systems, missiles, air defense, fighter jets—arrive late. Then the whole script repeats itself, with Ukraine catching up and suffering.
When Ukrainian troops finally obtained HIMARS rocket launchers in the summer of 2022, they were able to stunningly derail Russian logistics, undermine Russia’s immense artillery power, halt a Russian offensive, and help precipitate the liberation of Kherson later that year.
The American-made Patriot air defense system was completely banned until the end of 2022, when it was finally allowed to be used against the Russian Air Force. The late arrival of the ATACMS missiles, declared banned for more than two years, ended up causing devastating damage to Russian airfields and air defense systems in occupied Crimea. All this without any “escalation” of repercussions.
After counting the red lines crossed and the consequences, the Kremlin’s nuclear threats are starting to sound a little stifling, aren’t they? As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pointed out, Putin may be crazy, but his survival instinct is still alive. We must have the courage to challenge it.
Appeasing Putin is not the path to peace; it is an open invitation to eliminate Ukraine as a nation, absorb its territory and resources, and install Russian aggressors right on Europe’s borders.
Putin will only stop when he is forced to, with an appropriate and powerful response that will end his ability to fight. The Ukrainians repelled Russia’s attempted decapitation of kyiv in February and March 2022 with this kind of all-out effort.
Commentators, politicians, and policymakers in Congress and elsewhere in the West must stop ignoring the reality of what is needed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Either that, or openly admit that they are working to further the victory of the Russian aggressor.
Providing Ukraine with the support and weapons it needs does not mean prolonging the war. Rather, it means stopping Putin by speaking the only language he understands.
Illia Ponomarenko is a former defense and security journalist at the Kyiv Post and later co-founder of the Kyiv IndependentHis book “I’ll Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime kyiv” was published in May.
