U.S. says Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia will likely take a long time and come at a "high cost"
Brussels — The U.S. and other nations that have contributed billions of dollars already to support Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia's nearly-16-month, full-scale invasion, are shifting toward helping to sustain Ukraine's counteroffensive. Top U.S. defense officials warned this week that they expect the fight to be long and come "at a high cost."
"We've given Ukraine's forces important training and impressive capabilities, but war is fluid, dynamic and unpredictable," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a collection of nations that have backed Kyiv. "Ukraine's fight is not some easy sprint to the finish line."
Austin attended the contact group meeting in Brussels with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who said Ukraine's plodding counteroffensive would "likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost."
Both of the senior U.S. officials expressed optimism about Ukraine's chances in the long-run, but made it clear the country's success would demand continued commitments from, and unity of the international coalition.
"We're moving from a crisis mode to a campaign mode," a Western official involved with coordinating international aid to Ukraine told reporters this week.
The U.S. and its partners have spent more than a year providing a variety of equipment and weapons to Ukraine as the country's vastly outnumbered forces resisted the Russian invasion, but now, as the counteroffensive gets underway, those countries are turning toward helping Kyiv sustain its fight back.
The official said the Ukrainians are already operating about 600 different types of weapons systems on the battlefield, and while many are their own, the international community has added about 120 different systems to Ukraine's arsenal.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters this week that the Ukraine Defense Contact Group was beginning to have conversations about how to focus its support going forward on the systems that have made the biggest difference in the fight and are manageable for Ukrainians to maintain. That could mean reducing the variety of weapons and other equipment sent to the country and focusing on what has been working, the official indicated.
One example of the shift is the layout of the U.K.-led international donor coordination cell, located since August 2022 at the U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden in Germany. The coordination cell was established near the start of Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion to coordinate donations and get the equipment into Ukraine. So far, the cell has coordinated around 150,000 tons of equipment for Ukraine.
The cell is now located in what used to be a basketball gym. Personnel from 21 countries sit at desks and office chairs organized on the floor, which has been carpeted, and along the wide bleacher rows.
Initially, the desks were organized more by country, according to the Western official, but recently, the roughly 100 people working on the floor have been sectioned out to different specialties. For instance, one area has personnel focused on maintenance and sustainment and another area has personnel more focused on movement and operations. The Western official said that lately, the maintenance and sustainment team has been particularly busy on the phones.
In the opening days of Ukraine's counteroffensive, Russian media outlets repeatedly showed images of damaged, U.S.-donated armored vehicles, holding it up as purported evidence of what the Kremlin has painted as a failed counterattack.
"I think the Russians have shown us that same five vehicles about 1,000 times from 10 different angles," Austin said in Brussels. "But quite frankly, the Ukrainians still have a lot of combat capability, combat power."
U.S. officials have already said future assistance packages could include more of these armored vehicles, and the most recent package, announced this week, did. But the U.S. and its allies have also focused the past few months on training Ukrainian forces on how to repair the vehicles they've already received.
The vehicles will reenter the fight faster if the U.S. and other Ukrainian partners source spare parts for the Ukrainians, enabling them to repair the vehicles themselves, according to U.S. officials.
"Regarding the battlefield losses of vehicles and equipment, this is a war," Austin said Thursday. "So we know that there will be battle damage on both sides, and what's important is that the Ukrainians have the ability to recover equipment that's been damaged, repair it where possible and get that equipment back into the fight."
The U.S. and its allies trained 12 brigades of Ukrainian forces over the past few months in preparation for the counteroffensive. In total, the U.S. has trained 11,400 Ukrainians since February 2022 and, when combined with the efforts of its partners, that number rises to 57,000 Ukrainian troops.
Currently, the U.S. is training about three battalions of Ukrainians, including a tank battalion training on the M1A1 Abrams, the U.S. military's main heavy battle tank. Ukraine has been promised 31 of the tanks, which are expected to arrive around early fall. Ukraine has already taken delivery of European-made tanks.
A U.S. military official told reporters this week that the U.S. has projected out specific training plans for Ukrainians until the end of summer, but is ready to extend that timeframe.
A senior Canadian official involved with the international effort to train Ukrainians said some countries have already planned for specific training until December. Currently, there are about 6,000 Ukrainians taking part in 65 training courses at 40 sites on three different continents.
The U.S. and its allies are still working on the plan to train Ukraine's fighter pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, including U.S. F-16s. Denmark and the Netherlands have offered to lead that training and, at some point, the U.S. will need to approve the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine and the training of its pilots on the fighter jets. U.S. officials have said it could take a considerable length of time for the Ukrainians to build up a capable air force.