Uncle Sam finally coughs up weapons — but is it too late to save Ukraine from Putin?

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

Ukraine’s leaders breathed a hearty sigh of relief when news broke that the U.S. House of Representatives finally, after six months of stalling and wrangling, approved $60.8 billion in assistance to help the country defend itself from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The gratitude was fulsome, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeting “Thank you, America!” — though there were some caveats from Kyiv. Sharing her thanks, opposition lawmaker Inna Sovsun couldn’t resist a jab at the U.S., asking, “was it necessary to delay half a year in order to vote? How many lives could have been saved?”

However, according to Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, “This vote indicates that isolationism is a minority faith in U.S. politics, with nearly three-quarters of the House supporting engagement and support for the defense of key democracies.”

And Ukraine’s military commanders — on tenterhooks for six months, watching the country’s future hanging on a vote 5,000 miles away — now hope the U.S. Senate signs off on the aid package quickly, so it’s ready for President Joe Biden’s pen.

But the pressing question is just how fast materiel, arms and ammunition — especially artillery shells and air defense systems — will actually arrive. Will it all come in the nick of time, ahead of an expected Russian offensive this June or July, which Ukrainian commanders fear could punch holes in Ukraine’s front lines? And if so, what happens after?

The truth is, it remains unclear whether it will take days, weeks or months for the kit to arrive at the front lines. And it all partly depends on how much has been pre-positioned in Europe in anticipation of the U.S. Congress approving the package, as the Pentagon had been making reassuring noises that it was stockpiling kit ahead of the vote.

“We would expect a priority to be artillery [ammunition and barrels] as well as air defense systems and missiles to replenish stocks depleted by recent Russian airstrikes, particularly on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” said Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London.

Savill cautions that even the quick delivery of artillery shells — which Ukraine’s front line soldiers have had to ration — won’t create immediate parity with Russia’s volume of fire, “but it will help close the gap.”

Certainly, however, the replenishment will act as a much-needed “boost to morale,” and provide the “necessary pre-conditions for the hard work to begin reconstituting Ukrainian combat forces and — critically — collective training to build a force that stands a chance of making progress next year,” he said.

And yet, these resupplies still won’t be sufficient to do much more than help Ukraine shore up its defenses for the likely Russian storm to come. And it certainly won’t be enough gear for Ukraine to go on the offensive itself. Only $28 billion of the approved package is for direct military provision by the U.S., $13.9 billion is to help Ukraine buy equipment on the market, and $13.7 billion is to purchase U.S. systems from the private sector — and this will all take time to feed through.

So, what happens after this package has been used up to fend off a Russian attack? And what, if anything, can Ukraine expect to receive for a counteroffensive next spring?

Predictability of supply has been a headache for Ukraine from the get-go, as military aid has been held hostage to the domestic politics of Ukraine’s various allies and their incoherence regarding war aims.  

“Back in 2022, it was absolutely understandable that Western governments were reluctant to offer military help,” Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s former defense minister, told me in an exclusive interview.

“They expected Kyiv would fall within 72 hours. When we showed the world we could fight the Russians very successfully and stop them, it changed their minds. And then later, they became more determined because of the Russian atrocities at Bucha,” he added.

But according to Reznikov, even when Western determination was running high, getting the gear Ukraine needed was like pulling teeth. In the months before the invasion, for example, when the U.S. was convinced Russia would launch a full-scale onslaught, Reznikov said he faced resistance.

“The reactions in November and December 2021 in Washington, D.C. for supplies, including Stingers, was negative. ‘It’s impossible,’ I was told by the Pentagon and the State Department,” he said.

After the invasion it became easier, but there was still a struggle for every new type of missile, for every air defense system, for more 155-millimeter artillery rounds. Reznikov believes one of the reasons for this was that allies were worried about depleting the stocks necessary for their own defense. “And in the middle of the summer in 2023, I absolutely understood there was public and political fatigue and that things would slow even more because of domestic politics in allied countries,” he said.

Furthermore, Western governments also wanted to see what happened with Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

“Everyone wants to back a winner — it’s part of human nature,” Reznikov said. But like other Ukrainian leaders — both military and civilian — he complained that the counteroffensive was over-hyped and that expectations were far too great, as much of what Ukraine needed was still withheld.

“We got a lot of new armed vehicles, tanks and artillery systems, and the munitions for them. But, for example, we were not given enough special equipment for demining. The Russians had huge and dense minefields, and used the heights to prepare tank ambushes, copying the tactics we used to defend Kyiv,” he added.

And unfortunately, the unpredictability of supply is unlikely to get better due to forthcoming elections in both the U.S. and Europe — in fact, it could get a lot worse.

But the hope in Kyiv is that even if former U.S. President Donald Trump is reelected, Europe now has time to prepare, and that it could step in next year to fill the shortfall in Ukraine’s needs.

The question is: Will it?