US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a recent interview with the major broadcaster PBS argued the Biden administration’s legacy on Ukraine will be one of smart geopolitics and vigorous and effective American support of Ukrainian independence and democracy.
Kyiv Post fact checks of Sullivan’s comments made in the interview aired on Nov. 18 found that President Biden’s top security advisor made assertions about the US-Ukraine relationship that are factually not the case.
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Sullivan’s points included:
– The US is not directly participating in Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia because the US is providing Ukraine weapons and money, but not sending fighting men.
Technically this is true but only technically.
US-made armored vehicles were used in Ukrainian border raids into Russia in 2023, and on Tuesday, Ukraine for the first time, used US-made ballistic missiles to strike targets in Russian Federation territory. According to the Kremlin, not only US-made but French and British precision-guided munitions use US-controlled reconnaissance data to strike Russian forces and kill and injure Russian soldiers.
– The US gave Ukraine F-16 fighter jets: “We (the US) have provided the F-16s (to Ukraine).”
This is false.
In fact, three nations – Denmark, Netherlands and Norway have promised to transfer to Ukraine F-16 fighter jets those countries bought from the US back in the 1980s and 90s. About 65 aircraft have been pledged, of which six are in theater. The US as the manufacturing country had the right to veto the transfer of the jets owed by those European countries to a third party, in this case Ukraine. After more than a year of refusing to do so, the US authorized the transfer. Sullivan’s office was the key executive branch agency that okayed it, but Dutch, Danish and Norwegian taxpayers – not American – paid for the jets.
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– Ukraine is not doing enough to mobilize manpower “in order to firm up its lines” against Russian attacks. “What is the straightest line between Ukrainian (battlefield) performance and inputs? It’s on mobilization and manpower.” Sullivan was responding to a question about whether the US had done enough to help Ukraine stop Russian advances.
This idea is highly debatable, and on the ground, at the front in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it’s just false.
Frontline Ukrainian troops would lampoon Sullivan’s claim. Based on the experience of nearly three years of war with Russian forces attacking almost continuously, Ukrainian troops stop Russian attacks when they have enough firepower, meaning first and foremost artillery and sufficient supplies of artillery shells. It is considered a given on the front that if mortar and artillery shells are sufficient, any Russian attack can and will be stopped.
Also critical are long-range air defense systems, because if there aren’t enough of those systems, the Russian Air Force systematically bombs and levels Ukrainian positions with long-range glide bombs launched from outside the range of what air defenses the Ukrainians have.
A significant problem for Ukrainian recruiters, is that it is difficult to find volunteers willing to take a fighting job that would effectively place that volunteer in a defensive position protected by artillery short of shells, and bombarded by glide bombs launched by the Russian air force with impunity.
Although Ukraine’s military manpower shortages are real, Sullivan’s argument that insufficient troops lie at the heart of Ukrainian defensive weaknesses flies in the face of actual combat experience. In the Russo-Ukrainian War, first and foremost, the weight of firepower wins battles.
– US deliveries of key weaponry (e.g., Patriot missiles, M1A1 Abrams tanks, HIMARS precision-guided rocket launchers) have been adequate. This was in response to a question about whether weaponry made available by the US later in the war should have been provided to Ukraine earlier.
From the point of view of effective, long-term Ukrainian defense capacity, this is not true.
From December 2023 to May 2024 the US halted all arms transfers to Ukraine, and the pace of Russian advances once the effects of that embargo effectively reached Ukrainian frontline forces led to an effective doubling – in some sectors more – of the pace of Russian advance. The correlation to the US halt of arms deliveries and greater Russian battlefield success is direct and substantial.
In terms of the specific weapons named by Sullivan, the battlefield effect has depended on scale. HIMARS proved to be devastating in Fall 2022 when it arrived in theater, but by Spring 2023 the Russian military had largely countered the system by dispersing its troop sites and ammunition depots out of range of the system, and fielding jammers that to some extent foxed HIMARS rockets’ GPS guidance.
In the case of Patriot missiles, a high-tech air defense system, the weapon has proved to be almost irreplaceable for defense of key cities from Russian air attacks, but the US missiles even outside the embargo period were provided in quantities insufficient to shoot down the mass of drones and missiles the Russians launched. As a result, key Ukrainian infrastructure has been demolished in Russian strikes in a region defended by a Patriot system out of ammunition.
The US sent Ukraine 31 Abrams tanks, a drop in the bucket in a war where the fighting sides field somewhere between 700-1,200 tanks across the front. In the field, Ukrainian troops have found Abrams to be a powerful vehicle but far from superior to German Leopards or British Challenger tanks also operated by the AFU. Compared to Russian tanks, Abrams are seen as far better protected, equipped with far better optics and cannon, but also more complicated to maintain and at times inconveniently heavy.
– The Biden administration can take credit for preventing Russian defeat of Ukraine in the early days of the war. “We are able to stand up to and push back against Russian aggression in Ukraine to keep Kyiv from falling… Kyiv stands.”
Although the verdict on that will be left to historians, almost anyone who was in Kyiv at the time would say that the argument that the Russian army did not capture Kyiv thanks to the Biden administration, is demonstrably false.
In fact, at the outset of the Russian invasion, the Biden administration advised the Zelensky government to evacuate the Ukrainian capital, possibly to set up a government-in-exile in Lviv or Poland. Senior US officials predicted Ukrainian resistance would collapse in a matter of weeks – this is the origin of President Zelensky’s now-iconic comment “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”
US-provided weaponry available for the Battle of Kyiv was limited, effectively, to hand-held anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles which were effective, but constituted only a minor percentage of weaponry that stopped the Russian attack. By and large, Kyiv was defended successfully because of very hard fighting by three regular army brigades to the north of the city in open terrain, and vicious resistance by armed civilians and smaller military units inside Kyiv’s northern suburbs. That battle was won and Russian forces retreated at the end of March. The first major US weapons deliveries arrived in Ukraine only in mid-May.
– (Thanks to the bravery of the Ukrainian people) but also thanks to Joe Biden rallying countries around the world we defended Kyiv, we defended Ukraine and Ukraine will continue to be a thriving democracy anchored in Western institutions in the future.”
Here Sullivan was predicting the future and so his claim cannot be fully checked.
However, one day after Sullivan spoke to PBS, President Zelensky in comments told Fox News Ukraine would lose the war if Washington pulled funding. Ukraine would keep on fighting in any case, Zelensky said, “But I think we will lose.”
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