The Daily - Why the U.S. Is Sending More Powerful Weapons to Ukraine

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United States and allies have held back from sending Kyiv their most potent arms.Over the past few weeks, that has started to change.Guest: Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Ukraine has a narrow window of time to retake more territory ahead of an expected Russian spring offensive.The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the United States has held back from sending Kyiv its most powerful weapons. Arming them, critics said, with just enough not to lose the war, but not enough to win it. Over the past few weeks, that has started to change. The United States may be soon sending even further advanced weapons systems to Ukraine. The UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, said Britain would send tanks to Ukraine along with additional

artillery support. Ukraine's foreign minister says Patriot missiles from the US will soon arrive in Kyiv to help in its fight against Russia. Today, my colleague Eric Schmidt on how the West is supplying more and more powerful weapons and what that escalation tells us about the future of the war. It's Thursday, January 19th. January 19th. So Eric, in the past few weeks, we passed what felt like, to me, a pretty important marker in the war in Ukraine, which was that the U.S. agreed to give Ukraine Patriot missiles, these really powerful weapons that Ukraine had been asking for for a long time, but had never gotten. And then European countries said they'd give Ukraine tanks, something they had not given before. So my question for you is,

what does all of this say about where we are in the war? You know, that the West is giving all these really advanced weapons. Well, we're at a really critical phase of the war right now, Sabrina. Western nations are basically making some very important decisions in the next several days about whether to give increasing combat power to Ukraine to help Ukraine both fend off these Russian attacks that are devastating their cities and their electrical grids, but also help them push the Russians back and regain more territory and also thwart what they fear is going to be a Russian assault in the spring. So basically the West is seeing this as a moment that if they give the right kind of support, they can really bring about a big change in the trajectory of the war.

That's right. And it's really seen as a window of opportunity. They're trying to give them some additional firepower that allows them to punch through some of the dug-in Russian defenses that Moscow has put up in these last few months. So tell us what the thinking is when the U.S. and the West decides to give a new weapon. What's in their mind? What are they calculating? So I think what's happened over the course of the war is that the West looks at three basic things. One is what do the Ukrainians actually need right then and there? What's going to be most effective in fighting the Russians?

The second is, can you trust the Ukrainians to use this responsibly? And can they actually handle this kind of weaponry? Or is it too advanced for them? And third, and this is very important for President Biden, to what extent does providing this kind of weaponry risk escalating the fight with Russia to drag the United States and NATO into any further conflict? So what this amounts to, basically, is that you have kind of signature weapons for each distinct phase of the war so far.

So there's an evolution to all this, both in what they need, you know, how they can use it. And then there's also been very much of an evolution in the risk calculation that the Biden administration and the West has gone through. in the risk calculation that the Biden administration and the West has gone through. Okay, so this pattern of a distinct weapon for each phase of the war, for each season, basically, what do you mean by that? Like, tell me how it worked from the beginning. So at the beginning of the war, for instance, President Zelensky of Ukraine, he was asking for the moon. He wanted everything he could get his hands on, as many weapons and arms as possible to repel this huge Russian invasion. He wanted a no-fly zone,

American jets to come in and basically defend his airspace. He wanted high-speed fighter jets. He wanted rocket launchers like HIMARS. And then he wanted air defense systems like the Patriot missiles. But the United States is looking at those three criteria we talked about and saying, well, what can we get to the battlefield right away that's going to make a difference right now? And the battlefield, which at this point in the war, is in urban areas like Kiev. And you have Russians bombing cities with helicopters, and you have tanks rolling in. If you remember that major armored column that was miles long early in the war. So these are the immediate threats that are facing the Ukrainians. And the Americans are trying to figure out, well, what kind of weapons can we get that will help

them out? And so what they're saying is, we can get to you weapons like Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles. These are portable systems that can strike helicopters and low-flying aircraft. You've got the Javelins that can take out that armored column. And these are things that soldiers literally just put on their shoulders and fire. Yeah. These were seen as weapons that the United States could rush quickly to the battlefield. The Ukrainians either knew how to use them or they could be trained very quickly. They could be quite effective on the ground. And remember, the other criteria here is fear of escalation. The administration looks at these weapons and says, look, these are defensive weapons.

We're sending to Ukraine to help repel this illegal invasion. the administration looks at these weapons and says, look, these are defensive weapons we're sending to Ukraine to help repel this illegal invasion. We don't believe these can be considered by Moscow, no matter what the Kremlin says, as offensive weaponry. And so we think this is an appropriate type of weapon to send that they can use right away that'll have an effect. We realize Zelensky's asking for a lot, but this is what we can send right now that makes a difference right away. Okay, so they get these shoulder-fired things, the javelins, the singers, but not the big stuff. No fighter jets. That's right. Things like fighter jets or longer-range missiles, things like that that could strike inside of Russia itself, these are seen as kind of no-go red lines for the Biden administration as they still are trying

to calculate the risk of escalation spiraling out of control of the Russians. They don't know where Putin's red lines really are, so they're being cautious. And sometimes they're being criticized for that caution. But that's kind of how they move about this. So, Eric, what's the next stage or phase as we've been talking about? Like, how do things evolve from here? Well, it turns out that the Stingers and the Javelins have their intended effect. The Ukrainians are able to use these weapons to shoot down combat aircraft that are attacking cities like Kyiv. They're able to take out an astonishing number of Russian tanks with the Javelins. And so they're, you know, over the first several weeks, they're able to actually repel this Russian

invasion. And it turned out to be a total disaster for the Russians, so much so that they have to basically pull their troops out of the north and basically regroup and move around to an area of the eastern part of the country called the Donbass. And that has a meaningful impact on how this war is going to be fought because the battlefield has now changed. Unlike the urban areas where the initial weeks of the war was fought, the Donbass region is much more wide open plains. I mean, think Kansas, for instance. And so the war is now going to be waged in this much different environment. And it's an environment that puts Russia at a big advantage because they can use some of their best and most plentiful weaponry they've got, long-range artillery shells,

and just tens of thousands of these shells that basically rain down on the Ukrainian forces on the other end of this. And the problem is that the Ukrainians, they've got artillery too, because they're using a lot of the former Russian stuff, but their artillery typically doesn't reach as far as the Russian artillery does. So once again, Zelensky goes to the West and says, hey, I need more. I need more. But again, the West, the Biden administration, Western allies go back and they're making a calculation saying, we're not going to give you all of these things. We're going to try and give you something that

will allow you to specifically deal with Russia's long range artillery. And that weapon system is something known as HIMARS. Remind us what the HIMARS are. Yeah, the HIMARS is this kind of longer range artillery system that can fire multiple rockets up to 50 miles. But again, the concern was that these not be overly provocative. So the administration actually adjusted these HIMARS so that the range that they could use them in, strike targets, would be still within Russian-occupied Ukraine. They would not be used to strike targets inside of Russia itself. Interesting. Think of kind of the Goldilocks approach. You

know, here it's long enough to hit new targets that'll disrupt this new kind of Russian offensive, but not so long that they could actually strike inside of Russia and provoke perhaps even a nuclear response from the Russian military. This is all, again, calibrated. They're learning, the administration in the West is learning, you know, what are Putin's red lines? They're doing something they would never have done early on, but they're learning kind of along the way that they can take a little bit more risk in providing these kind of weapons with certain modifications on them that'll help the Ukrainians push back.

And Eric, how does it change the war? What difference do the HIMARS make? So the HIMARS are important because these are very precision weapons. They're GPS-guided, and so unlike regular artillery, which just hits in a general vicinity, these are hitting very specific command posts, very specific ammunition depots. And the effect is almost immediate, the Ukrainians say. And they sense kind of disarray in the Russian ranks because they had gotten complacent, thinking that their rear lines were safe, and now it's not. It almost immediately blunted this artillery offensive that the Russians were pushing forward with and looked like they had a real dramatic advantage of. So again, this evolution of the weapons now has given the Ukrainians the ability to start pushing

back on the Russian offensive in a way they didn't have before. Got it. Okay, so there's this new momentum for the Ukrainians, partly because of the HIMARS. How do the Russians respond? Because it seems like, you know, the kind of thing that the Russians would see as a pretty big escalation on the part of the United States. Kiev and the electrical grid. And they basically say, okay, you're going to go after our forces on the ground, but we're also going to take this fight to a different level. We're going to go after the civilian population and hoping to break the Ukrainian will that way. If not necessarily on the battlefield, we will take it directly to the citizens and make their lives as miserable and bleak as possible. That was a serious escalation.

You know, when Russia started to punch out the power infrastructure all over Ukraine, it wasn't escalating to a nuclear conflict, as some people were worried about, but it did make a serious big new problem for Ukraine. So what happened next? What did the Ukrainians ask for? So what happened next, Sabrina, was that the Russian attacks on the infrastructure actually even increased even more after some really humiliating setbacks the Russians suffered in the northern area of Kharkiv and the southern city of Kherson. They so angered the Russians

that they stepped up their attacks by Iranian drones that they had purchased, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles. And the problem with these systems was that many of these missiles are being fired by Russian bombers that are inside of Russian airspace. Wow, that's so far away. Yeah. That's so far away. Yeah. So the Ukrainians, you know, even though they seem to have gained some momentum on the battlefield, they really seem to be losing the war at home and that their cities are under attack.

Right. And winter's coming. It's cold. You know, the electrical grid's going out. Water doesn't work. It's devastating in effect. And they put out a call for air defenses. And it's a whole array of different systems that the Ukrainians are asking for from the United States and other Western countries. And air defenses meaning what? What are they asking for exactly?

These are systems that are basically things that can either knock down, jam, or otherwise thwart, whether it's drones that are flying in that you can knock down or confuse, or missiles that can shoot down incoming missiles. Okay. The principle, the gold standard of these air defense system is something called the Patriot Missile System. This is something that's been around for decades, and they're some of the most coveted defensive weapon systems in the American arsenal. Okay, so we're talking about weapons that Biden has now several times refused to send. So how does he respond?

I mean, when the Ukrainians ask him for these Patriot missiles, what's his response? Well, the administration is really forced into a difficult position because they see the destruction playing out before their very eyes. It's the immense human toll, the casualties on the ground, the imagery coming from these damaged buildings. So there is a vigorous debate within the administration.

You have advisors to the president urging him to go ahead and send these Patriot missiles, even though it's going to take several months for the Ukrainians to learn how to use and operate them. You have others that are warning that there are other systems, maybe other countries could give their Patriot missiles to them because the United States needs them. There's their own concern about U.S. combat readiness. The president is having to weigh all this, and he's also obviously hearing from President Zelensky over and over again,

I need your help, I need your help, My cities are being destroyed before your very eyes. So ultimately, Biden decides that, yes, he is going to send the Patriot missiles to Ukraine. And he decides that the time to announce that should coincide with a visit to Washington that President Zelensky is secretly planning to make at the end of December. It would be his first trip outside of Ukraine since the war began. So on Wednesday, December 21st, Justice Zelensky is arriving in D.C. from this long overnight flight. Well, Mr. President, it's good to have you back. I'm delighted you're able to make the trip. Biden bails this massive spending package.

We're going to continue to strengthen Ukraine's ability to defend itself, particularly air defense. And that's why we're going to be providing Ukraine with Patriot missile battery. Which includes the Patriot missiles. All my appreciations from my heart, from the heart of Ukrainians, all Ukrainians. And there's an entire day full of pomp and circumstance in Washington, with Zelensky meeting with Biden and his top aides. Members of Congress. I think it's too much. I think it is. in Washington, with Zelensky meeting with Biden and his top aides, and speaking in front of a jam-packed Congress to thunderous applause.

We have artillery. Yes. Thank you. Where Zelensky both thanks the United States for all that it has done, but also asks for more help. We stand, we fight, and we will win because we are united, Ukraine, America, and the entire free world. and the entire free world. And it's a very clear and public signal that the U.S. is standing behind Ukraine and is ready to escalate its support to a whole new level. And it's a clear message to Putin that the U.S. isn't backing down. So what was Russia's response to the U.S. sending Ukraine these Patriot missiles? Well Putin actually addressed this directly in a news conference in late December.

He was actually dismissive of the Patriot, calling it an old system that they would basically work around. But as for the Patriots, they are quite old systems. And they don't work like our S-300s. attack on Dnipro, an apartment building that killed dozens of people just last weekend. So the assault on the cities continues, even as the combat, with the exception of a couple of places, essentially stalemated along this hundreds of miles of front lines. It seems like there's a pattern here, right? I mean, basically, Ukraine asked for some sort of weapon. The Biden administration debates whether to provide that weapon, eventually does provide that weapon. And that decision allows Ukraine to fight back against Russia in a new way, which then

causes Russia to have to change its tactics to deal with that new weapon. And that sets off a whole new cycle of exactly the same thing. That's right. We've seen this through these phases we've described, whether it's just the initial defensive phase to pushing back on the artillery. And now we've come to the next phase of this, which is what kind of new combat power can the West rush to Ukraine? They can learn to operate quickly. That'll make a difference on the battlefield. And what kind of weapon are we talking about, Eric, and from whom? So the next weapon that the West and the United States is going to be sending are infantry

fighting vehicles. They're armored vehicles. They can fire cannons on Russian positions. But most importantly, these are an upgrade to what the Ukrainians already have. They have some of their own armored vehicles of their own, but they've been shot up over the course of the war. And this happened in early January, where the three countries did commit dozens of these armored fighting vehicles. And they're coming from the United States, they're coming from Germany, they're coming from Britain. But what this commitment did was it opened a larger discussion about, okay, what has Ukraine really been asking for? Battle tanks, you know, massive tanks that can crunch through Russian defenses much more effectively, long-range cannons. just in the last several days, the British have announced that they will send just over a dozen of their Challenger battle tanks. And this is all seen as a way of hopefully putting pressure on the largest single European supplier of battle tanks, Germany.

We're really going to see this come to a head on Friday when there's a very important meeting of senior defense and military officials at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. And the main subject that's going to be on the table is battle tanks and specifically whether Germany, which manufactures a very effective tank called the Leopard tank, will either donate tanks of its own, and it has hundreds and hundreds of these tanks, or allow countries that it's sold Leopard tanks to, that have said they will donate their German tanks to Ukraine if Germany gives them permission to. So far, it has resisted. It has not wanted to be in the lead in sending offensive weaponry to Ukraine to fight against Russia, but it's coming under

increasing pressure from its allies, such as Britain, to at least let countries that have German tanks give those tanks to Ukraine so they can use them in the fight against Russia. That's kind of where we are in the war, and it kind of gives you an insight into where people think this very important moment is, that if they don't seize upon this right now, if they allow Russia more time to mobilize, the opportunity for Ukraine to punch through and gain back more territory would be lost. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, Eric, I've been watching this war, as you know, from the beginning.

And if you had asked me even a few months ago, I would have said that the future was this war kind of ending up in some frozen state. And eventually the real effort would be the West trying to get both sides to come to the negotiating table. But instead, it's just been this incredible ramping up by the West of weapons, you know, crossing red line after red line that they themselves had drawn. So why is the West doing this? months. In part, it's because the Ukrainians have showed they can use the weaponry and the arms that the U.S. and the Western allies send them. They can use them very responsibly and effectively and sometimes ingeniously. We've also seen over time that perhaps the concerns about Russian escalation have become, you know, somewhat more muted. There's less anxiety about Russian escalation as the West presses forward and kind of sees what the reaction is from the Kremlin and what they actually do and how much risk can be taken. They learn more about the decision-making process of the Russians right now. And then I think there's just also, frankly, the opportunity here where they see that a years-long stalemated war is just not in anybody's favor except for Russia's, really.

It's certainly not in Ukraine's favor. So really, there's an increasingly calls for what does it take to allow Ukraine to win, not just not to lose. But what does winning look like in the perspective of the West? Well, that's the big question, Sabrina, because if you listen to Zelensky, he's saying winning means taking back all territory that the Russians seized going back to 2014, even the Crimean Peninsula, which many believe is very difficult to do militarily, and that might actually cross a red line. The administration officials have certainly said it's more realistic, although still difficult, to retake territory that was seized since last February, since the Russian invasion.

Biden administration officials and other top Western government leaders have been very careful to say that the definition of winning really is up to the Ukrainians. officials and other top Western government leaders have been very careful to say that the definition of winning really is, you know, up to the Ukrainians. But that's only half the story. Yes, it's true, you know, in terms of how far the Ukrainians can push on the ground. They're the ones fighting and dying for this. But they also rely so heavily on Western military aid, on Western economic aid. And is a question just how long can the U.S. and its allies sustain both of those in a prolonged conflict. And so there will be a voice that the West has in this in the end. So if the West isn't aligned with Ukraine on what the

end looks like, how does it see the end? I mean, at what point does the West say, no more, we're done? Well, again, the public commitments are that the U.S. will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. You know, privately, however, there's concern about just how long the domestic support in United States or in Western countries will remain high for the Ukrainians. And that's where we're coming to this point where people are willing to take and talk about taking more risk, certainly much more risk than they would have taken at the beginning of the war, but even more risk than they would have taken just a few months ago to try and empower the Ukrainians to break through, to demonstrate to the Russians they can

take back more territory and thus to put them in a better position down the road for some kind of eventual settlement with the Russians, which is still, you know, at best months and months away right now. But that's kind of the outlook that Americans are looking at. So, Eric, are there any red lines left? I mean, any weapons that the administration's saying, as of this moment, they won't give in on? There are a few, Sabrina. Right now, it looks like the administration is still dug in that will not send American battle tanks, the so-called Abrams tanks.

They just, they guzzle too much gas, they're too hard to maintain, and particularly if there's a German alternative available that's what they want to do fighter jets are also off the table for now although they haven't ruled them out for longer term but more immediately most interestingly the next weapon system that may be sent is something called an attackums attack attackums is attackums this is a longer range uh missile uh perhaps you know twice or longer the range of the HIMARS, which could obviously, because of that range, strike targets inside of Russia itself, which of course is a huge red line. And that's one of the main reasons why the United States has not provided these longer range missiles to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have promised that if the Americans give them metacoms, they will not strike into Russia. So the next big test, of course, of this

trust that's been growing and evolving over the last several months is whether the U.S. would entrust these new longer weapon systems. It would be able to hit all kinds of Russian targets because the U.S. still does not know exactly what Putin's red lines are. So the Biden administration's caution, caution which they've been criticized for, is probably still going to be very much in place until it's, you know, a decision is made that it's worth the risk to help the Ukrainians push forward at this important moment. Eric, is there an argument to be made that the West should have given all the big guns right from the start? So Ukraine could have quashed the Russians right away, knowing that Russia

would not have responded with nuclear weapons as we see now, you know, rather than what we did, which was to have this drag on. Well, certainly that's been an argument of the administration's critics that they've been too slow to provide all these arms and equipment that they've eventually provided anyway. But it also, you have to take into consideration, we've discussed before, what's the capability of the Ukrainians? They had to demonstrate that they could, you know, basically get on a learning curve, and they've done so. With each progressive weapon system, they've adapted,

they've trained faster than people thought, they've utilized them in the field more effectively than people thought, and so they've won over many of their skeptics in the American military and elsewhere that said, well, I don't know if we can trust them to give these weapons or they're not capable of doing this. They've proved their skeptics wrong time and time again. And I think that's what's helped contribute to have these red lines fall as consistently as they have up to this point. But I guess, Eric, having been a war

correspondent, as you know, I have spent a lot of time thinking about conflict. And it strikes me that as the months go on and we increase these weapons supplies, bigger and stronger ones, there are fewer and fewer places to go in terms of increase, right? We've ticked up a lot. And at the same time, the risk is greater, a risk that we will trip over one of Putin's red lines and spark a nuclear conflict. So in a way, it turns out that Ukraine doing better and potentially being able to win this war has led to a place of greater risk. I think that's right, because they have to take the chance of pushing through now because that's their real only opportunity to try and come out of this without, you know, the increased threat of having this threat of Russia

constantly hanging over them. But again, what Putin's red lines are, are opaque. And that's what makes this, all these decisions in this calculus so challenging for the West, because they don't want to inadvertently do something that will make the war even worse than it is. But if they do too little, they know they're going to be solidifying the gains for Russia, and they'll lose the opportunity to help Ukraine prevail in this conflict. Eric, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina.

Here's what else you should know today. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it would lay off 10,000 workers, the latest in a growing list of big technology companies that have announced plans for workforce reductions. In the past few years, the tech industry grew more rapidly than it had in decades, as Microsoft and other tech companies hired frenetically to meet the surge in demand for online services during the pandemic. For Microsoft, the cuts amount to less than 5% of its global workforce. the cuts amount to less than 5% of its global workforce. And a helicopter carrying senior Ukrainian officials crashed in a Kiev suburb,

killing more than a dozen people, among them Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs and his top deputy. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. The minister, Denis Manasirsky, had been a close political ally of President Vladimir Zelensky, who, in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called for a minute of silence to honor those who were killed

and asked countries gathered there to move faster to support his country's war effort. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Rochelle Bonja. It was edited by Lexi Diao and Paige Cowett, and was engineered by Marian Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. We'll see you tomorrow.