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That the iconic bridge is still standing is itself remarkable, because Ukraine’s allies possess the weaponry to send it crashing into the Kerch Strait about 100 feet below. That they have not provided that capability to Ukraine reflects a fundamental disconnect in the blood-soaked contest of wills between Putin and the West.
Disregard the happy talk in Washington and European capitals about the strategic defeat Moscow has suffered by its ruinous invasion. The reality is that Putin senses victory is within reach, in terms he defines.
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He has retooled the Russian economy to sustain the war indefinitely, confident that Western patience is wearing thin. One-third of Russia’s budget will go for defense this year, almost triple the share in the U.S. budget. The Kremlin’s military spending is on course to reach 6 percent of Russian economic output this year, more than twice the proportion earmarked by most NATO countries.
By contrast, Washington and its European allies appear exhausted by their effort to defend Ukraine, with tens of billions of dollars in further aid blocked for now by Republicans in Congress and by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban in the European Union. Whatever Ukraine’s own military mistakes, it is indisputable that the West could and should have done more, faster, to prepare Kyiv for its months-long counteroffensive that began last June. Instead the West dithered, and Ukraine’s push petered out as fall turned to winter.
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That has shifted the momentum on the battlefield, forcing Kyiv’s troops into a defensive crouch as Russia fills the skies with projectiles aimed at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. In a five-day span ending Jan. 2, Russia directed more than 500 missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine. The barrage left at least 90 civilians dead and more than 400 injured, according to the United Nations.
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A German government spokesman condemned the attacks as war crimes. But Berlin has provided a prime example of Western waffling in its refusal to send Ukraine precisely the weapon that could destroy the Kerch Bridge: Germany’s Taurus missile.
Other Western missiles provided to Ukraine by the United States, Britain and France could punch holes in the bridge. The Taurus — air-launched, low-flying, highly accurate and able to penetrate its target before detonating — could sever it completely.
That would render the bridge’s twin road and rail spans unusable as supply arteries for Russian forces in Crimea, which Moscow has used as a platform to attack Ukraine. And though no single weapon or attack would turn the tide in the war, destroying the bridge would send a loud symbolic message, to the Kremlin and to Russians who cheered its construction, that the costs of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine will continue to mount, painfully.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s reluctance to send the Taurus to Ukraine is a microcosm of the West’s ambivalence and complacency.
On the one hand, Scholz, stunned by Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, has coaxed Germany into a strategic about-face following decades of starry-eyed certainty that Europe faced no strategic security threat. After the United States, Germany has sent more funds and materiel than any other country to help Kyiv survive Russia’s assault.
On the other hand, Scholz stuck to his hard “no” on the Taurus even after President Biden, after months of resistance, sent U.S. cruise missiles known as ATACMS to Ukraine last fall. German officials offer shifting explanations, some legalistic, some technical, for the chancellor’s stance. But the real reason seems plain: fear.
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Media reports suggest Scholz worries that Ukraine could use the Taurus, whose range is about 300 miles, to attack Russian territory; that he is concerned Putin would regard the missile’s delivery to Kyiv as provocative; that the chancellor is scared it could trigger an escalation.
Yet Ukraine has largely abided by its allies’ conditions not to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia. And previous fears that particular weapons shipments would provoke Putin have proved unfounded. In a scorched-earth campaign that has already razed dozens of Ukrainian cities, what would Russian escalation even look like? A Kremlin deployment of nuclear weapons always looked unlikely — all the more after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Putin against it.
Fear is corrosive, and it has subverted the allies’ resolve to turn back Putin’s land grab. By its hesitations and vacillations, the West has signaled weakness to the Russian tyrant. That, more than sending any missile to Ukraine, is the surest provocation, and the real danger.
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PARIS — When it opened to traffic in 2018, the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally invaded and annexed by Moscow four years earlier, was hailed by Vladimir Putin’s fawning media as “the construction project of the century.” At a cost of about $8 billion, the 12-mile span embodied in concrete and steel a century of Russian geopolitical dreams and Putin’s own neo-imperial project. The Russian dictator, who pushed the span’s construction despite enormous engineering challenges, drove a dump truck across it and proclaimed a “remarkable result.”
That the iconic bridge is still standing is itself remarkable, because Ukraine’s allies possess the weaponry to send it crashing into the Kerch Strait about 100 feet below. That they have not provided that capability to Ukraine reflects a fundamental disconnect in the blood-soaked contest of wills between Putin and the West.
Disregard the happy talk in Washington and European capitals about the strategic defeat Moscow has suffered by its ruinous invasion. The reality is that Putin senses victory is within reach, in terms he defines.
He has retooled the Russian economy to sustain the war indefinitely, confident that Western patience is wearing thin. One-third of Russia’s budget will go for defense this year, almost triple the share in the U.S. budget. The Kremlin’s military spending is on course to reach 6 percent of Russian economic output this year, more than twice the proportion earmarked by most NATO countries.
By contrast, Washington and its European allies appear exhausted by their effort to defend Ukraine, with tens of billions of dollars in further aid blocked for now by Republicans in Congress and by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban in the European Union. Whatever Ukraine’s own military mistakes, it is indisputable that the West could and should have done more, faster, to prepare Kyiv for its months-long counteroffensive that began last June. Instead the West dithered, and Ukraine’s push petered out as fall turned to winter.
That has shifted the momentum on the battlefield, forcing Kyiv’s troops into a defensive crouch as Russia fills the skies with projectiles aimed at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. In a five-day span ending Jan. 2, Russia directed more than 500 missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine. The barrage left at least 90 civilians dead and more than 400 injured, according to the United Nations.
A German government spokesman condemned the attacks as war crimes. But Berlin has provided a prime example of Western waffling in its refusal to send Ukraine precisely the weapon that could destroy the Kerch Bridge: Germany’s Taurus missile.
Other Western missiles provided to Ukraine by the United States, Britain and France could punch holes in the bridge. The Taurus — air-launched, low-flying, highly accurate and able to penetrate its target before detonating — could sever it completely.
That would render the bridge’s twin road and rail spans unusable as supply arteries for Russian forces in Crimea, which Moscow has used as a platform to attack Ukraine. And though no single weapon or attack would turn the tide in the war, destroying the bridge would send a loud symbolic message, to the Kremlin and to Russians who cheered its construction, that the costs of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine will continue to mount, painfully.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s reluctance to send the Taurus to Ukraine is a microcosm of the West’s ambivalence and complacency.
On the one hand, Scholz, stunned by Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, has coaxed Germany into a strategic about-face following decades of starry-eyed certainty that Europe faced no strategic security threat. After the United States, Germany has sent more funds and materiel than any other country to help Kyiv survive Russia’s assault.
On the other hand, Scholz stuck to his hard “no” on the Taurus even after President Biden, after months of resistance, sent U.S. cruise missiles known as ATACMS to Ukraine last fall. German officials offer shifting explanations, some legalistic, some technical, for the chancellor’s stance. But the real reason seems plain: fear.
Media reports suggest Scholz worries that Ukraine could use the Taurus, whose range is about 300 miles, to attack Russian territory; that he is concerned Putin would regard the missile’s delivery to Kyiv as provocative; that the chancellor is scared it could trigger an escalation.
Yet Ukraine has largely abided by its allies’ conditions not to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia. And previous fears that particular weapons shipments would provoke Putin have proved unfounded. In a scorched-earth campaign that has already razed dozens of Ukrainian cities, what would Russian escalation even look like? A Kremlin deployment of nuclear weapons always looked unlikely — all the more after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Putin against it.
Fear is corrosive, and it has subverted the allies’ resolve to turn back Putin’s land grab. By its hesitations and vacillations, the West has signaled weakness to the Russian tyrant. That, more than sending any missile to Ukraine, is the surest provocation, and the real danger.
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