Former U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to confuse the leaders of Turkey and Hungary in a campaign speech in New Hampshire on Monday.
“There’s a man, Viktor Orbán, anybody ever hear of him?” Trump said, referring to the Hungarian prime minister.
“He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey,” the former president said. Turkey’s president is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Trump added that Orbán has a “front” with Russia. Neither Turkey nor Hungary has a border with Russia.
Trump has previously praised Orbán, who opposes migration and LGBTQ rights, and refers to his governing style as an “illiberal democracy.” Trump hosted him at the White House in 2019.
In turn, Orbán was the first European leader to endorse Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and urged him to “keep fighting” after the former president was hit with a criminal indictment.
“Come back, Mr President. Make America great again and bring us peace,” Orbán told a meeting of the U.S. Conservative Political Action Coalition earlier this year.
LONDON — Boris Johnson issued a direct plea to Donald Trump not to ditch U.S. support for Ukraine if he becomes president in 2024.
Writing for the Spectator after a trip to Ukraine, the former British prime minister — who has lobbied hard for wavering Republicans to keep the faith in the war-torn country — warned Russian triumph could boomerang on any Trump administration.
“A Putin victory would be a catastrophe for the West and for American leadership, and I don’t believe it is an outcome that could easily be endured by a U.S. president, let alone one who wanted to Make America Great Again,” Johnson wrote in the Spectator.
Johnson said that should Ukraine succeed in repelling Russia, “then the reverse is true.”
“Exactly the opposite message will be sent around the world: that we do care about democracy, that we are willing to back our principles, and that the West still has the guts to stick at something until we succeed,” he added.
Since being forced from office last year, the ex-British leader has energetically lobbied for continued support for Ukraine. In May he attended a private lunch in Dallas, Texas, as part of efforts to shore up support for the Ukrainian war effort with skeptical Republicans. And he dined with Trump on the same trip, with a Johnson spokesperson saying he stressed “the vital importance of Ukrainian victory.”
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Expectations for Ukraine’s counteroffensive were too high from the start.
And as it now closes in on its third month, with no sign of a truly significant dynamic-changing breakthrough, it feels as though we’re back in a slog, a war of attrition that risks stretching the patience of impatient allies — something the Kremlin is no doubt hoping for.
Or, as American military strategist Edward Luttwak noted this week, “The Ukraine war has entered its ‘grin & bear it’ period as it fights a Great Power that tried & failed to conquer it in a week last February, and which is now organized for protracted war.”
Ukrainian officials blame their counterparts in allied governments for much of the overoptimism surrounding the counteroffensive — as well as an overenthusiastic Western media that mistakes wishful thinking for clear-eyed analysis all too often, conjuring up the idea of demoralized, badly led Russian soldiers quickly turning tail. The optimists’ view was that the counteroffensive would simply repeat the success of last fall, when Ukraine pulled off a stunning and rapid success around Kharkiv, as Russian defenses collapsed.
But Kyiv also bears some responsibility for of the optimistic prognosis of a quick breakthrough.
For much of the spring ahead of the counteroffensive, Chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov, among others, all too confidently pronounced the prospect, talking about the coming “decisive battle.” And Budanov even shrugged off pleas from Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to soften predictions of success.
But in defense of such overblown forecasts, what were Ukrainians supposed to say?
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried his best to pull off a tricky balancing act, holding out the possibility of delivering a decisive blow in order to shore up Western confidence and keep equipment and weapons flowing, while also tempering expectations. However, he dialed up the latter prospect too late — as did Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who became worried in late spring that hopes were “definitely overheated.”
Their efforts weren’t helped by retired American generals letting their thoughts run away with them either, talking up how Ukraine would soon be able to target annexed Crimea. “The problem is that we believe our own military propaganda,” complained Andrey Illarionov, a former senior Kremlin policy adviser who broke with Putin in 2005. A fierce critic of Moscow, Illarionov now fears a long war unless the West gets considerably more muscular.
Another reason behind Ukraine’s mistaken optimism was also a failure to understand that the Russian army was quickly learning from its own mistakes and correcting course. Just weeks ahead of the counteroffensive’s launch, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds — two of this war’s most thoughtful military analysts from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) — issued a warning about likely hiccups, detailing evidence of Russia’s learning curve, noting altered basic infantry tactics and improved artillery targeting, allowing guns to strike Ukrainian targets within minutes of detection.
They also highlighted other changes, including the “speed with which Russian infantry dig, and the scale at which they improve their fighting positions.” Russia’s armor tactics were altering as well, as they began using tanks to offer supporting firepower for infantry units from safe distances, rather than amassing them for bungled shock-and-awe attacks, and utilizing thermal camouflage to mask them.
Another common tactic, the authors wrote, “is for the Russians to withdraw from a position that is being assaulted and then saturate it with fire once Ukrainian troops attempt to occupy it.” This tactic, along with a phalanx of dense and imposing defensive lines that Russia emplaced in the south — the counteroffensive’s area of focus — is what’s now stalling Ukraine.
Another reason behind Ukraine’s mistaken optimism was also a failure to understand that the Russian army was quickly learning from its own mistakes and correcting course | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian forces are now having to contend with layers upon layers of varied anti-personnel and anti-armor mines in Zaporizhzia and Donetsk, including PFM-1 high-explosives — which can be scattered in their thousands by mortars, helicopters and aeroplanes without exploding upon hitting the ground. These minefields can be up to 16 kilometers deep and easily replenished when Ukrainian sappers make inroads, and by some estimates, Ukrainian territory that’s twice the size of Portugal has been heavily mined, sometimes with up to half a dozen mines per square-meter.
Ukraine now has little time to engineer a break through Russian defensive lines — which in some places are 30 kilometers deep — and then fully capitalize on any major breach before the weather turns again in a couple months. But so far, after weeks of fighting, they have only made inroads of around a few kilometers in key places. The first phase of the counteroffensive saw substantial losses in terms of Western-supplied armor, and the second phase of using infantry to try and find ways through hasn’t met with significant success either.
All Ukraine has been able to do is inch forward.
Still, according to frontline soldiers, morale remains high, mainly among the recently fully deployed — and Western-trained — 10th corps. The initial plan had been to only deploy the 10th once the main defensive lines had been reached, but they had to be thrown in sooner — testament to the awful, time-consuming slog facing Ukraine’s soldiers.
Unsurprisingly, many of them bristle at Western griping about their slow progress, such as the criticism contained in last month’s leaked battlefield assessment by Germany’s Bundeswehr, which faulted the Ukrainian military for not fully implementing its NATO training.
The counter to much of the Bundeswehr’s criticism, of course, is that Ukraine had little option but to move away from standard Western instruction on combined warfare tactics, as crucial elements of the armory needed to pull it off hadn’t been supplied by the West — namely F-16 warplanes and long-range missiles.
The pilots currently being trained on F-16s won’t be ready until next spring, and by then the Americans may have overcome their reluctance to supply longer-range missiles | Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR
In short, the West hobbled the Ukrainians before the starting gun had been fired, teaching them how to fight NATO-style but withholding the weapons systems needed to perform. On top of that, the West was always eager for Zelenskyy to get going, and allies became frustrated when he delayed the counteroffensive from spring to summer, as he lobbied to get more Western supplies.
So, with no apparent signs of a breakthrough, it appears it’s now time to return to the drawing board for the next fighting season in spring, in case success doesn’t come soon. After all, the pilots currently being trained on F-16s won’t be ready until next spring, and by then the Americans may have overcome their reluctance to supply longer-range missiles.
But if political calculations were difficult this year, with a U.S. presidential election looming, it’s important to remember that they’ll be even more taxing next year, with an exceptionally torrid and combustible White House election season in full swing, possibly distracting the administration’s attention and making it harder to get Congress to agree on the security and economic assistance Ukraine will need.
As Luttwak noted, “Ukraine need not win a great victory to exit the war an independent nation, only persistence.” And the question has never been about Ukrainian tenacity — by next year, though, the risks will increase whether the West has the stamina and will to win.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Wars don’t run according to political timetables. And in the lead-up to Ukraine’s counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top aides strove to explain this reality to both nervous allies, impatient for military progress, and their own people, eager for the big counterattack to kick off and hear good news from the front lines.
In the run-up to the long-awaited counteroffensive, which started to unfold last week — later than most anticipated — Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov was worried that expectations were “definitely overheated.” “Everyone wants another win,” he said, cautioning allies to temper their hopes, so as to avoid subsequent disappointment.
The worry here is that falling short of expectations might lead to a reduction in international military assistance and renewed, often oblique, pressure to engage with Moscow in negotiations. “They want the next victory. It’s normal, these are emotions,” Reznikov added.
But impatience for a decisive blow against Russia stems not just from emotion but from political calculations too.
A long war risks Western fatigue, the depletion of arsenals and an erosion of unity — especially with China, Brazil and South Africa touting dubious “peace” plans. And despite public promises to back Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” earlier this year Washington officials warned counterparts in Kyiv that they needed to make major battlefield gains soon, while weapons and aid from the U.S. and European allies are still surging.
With the U.S. heading into what’s likely to be an exceptionally torrid and combustible presidential election season — to say the very least — the high level of security and economic assistance from Congress might be hard to maintain, they warned. And according to Ukrainian lawmakers, in recent talks with U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials, queries regarding future commitments and asks were batted away, with the response often being, “let’s see how the counteroffensive goes.”
Former Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told POLITICO these talks left her feeling anxious about the “continuation of the same level of U.S. support to Ukraine after this financial year” — which, for the U.S. federal budget, is September.
Likewise, there are also signs of war-weariness and wariness in Europe, both among politicians and the public, with Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Zelenskyy’s office, complaining this week: “I understand that sitting thousands of kilometers away from Ukraine you can talk about ‘geopolitics,’ ‘settlement’ and the undesirability of escalation for months. And allow the rampage of the ‘Russian world.’”
Tellingly, even in Poland — one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies — the attitude toward Ukrainian war refugees is deteriorating. According to a survey by researchers from the University of Warsaw and the Academy of Economics and Humanities, in the past five months, the percentage of those who strongly support helping refugees dropped from 49 percent to 28 percent.
So, the political clock is ticking — and not necessarily matching the tempo of war.
Zelenskyy has had to pull off a difficult balancing act in recent weeks, holding out the prospect of delivering a decisive blow against Russia to shore up Western confidence and optimism and keep equipment and weapons flowing, while also underscoring that the counteroffensive most likely won’t be able to achieve the stunning quick success of last autumn’s push in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
| Alexey Furman/Getty Images
Triggering a cascading collapse of Russia’s defenses and a pell-mell rout, the success in Kharkiv helped keep Western allies on side, but it also unhelpfully colored expectations, adding to the hype surrounding the current counteroffensive, which Kyiv has been keen to calm. However, Ukrainian officials are acutely aware of Western fears about a long-drawn out war of attrition.
But Ukraine also doesn’t want to be pushed into any hasty moves that could result in serious and costly mishaps, which might then undermine military morale or knock Western hopes and have major geopolitical repercussions, a senior Ukrainian military official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “This is not like Kharkiv,” he said. “We must be cautious. The Russians have been learning and preparing, and their defensive lines are formidable — we don’t have men to waste, nor equipment. Progress will have to be incremental.”
And incrementalism is the new watchword.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy noted on Monday that “the battles are fierce, but we are moving forward, and this is very important. The enemy’s losses are exactly what we need.”
Similarly, according to Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. army in Europe, this “offensive is incredibly important for Ukraine’s future.” “Kyiv’s top military leadership has, to date, followed the conservative strategy of eroding Russian formations over time, gaining ground incrementally, avoiding major risks and limiting Ukrainian casualties as much as possible,” he wrote for the Center for European Policy Analysis.
“The offensive has clearly started, but not I think the main attack. When we see large, armored formations join the assault, then I think we’ll know the main attack has really begun,” he added.
Even though the main action is still to come, however, as Zelenskyy highlighted, the going is clearly tough.
And his Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar made this even clearer, saying on Telegram: “The enemy is doing everything to keep the positions captured by him. Actively uses assault and army aviation, conducts intense artillery fire. During the offensive, our troops encounter continuous minefields, which are combined with anti-tank ditches. All this is combined with constant counterattacks by enemy units on armored vehicles and the massive use of anti-tank guided missile and kamikaze drones.”
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Ukrainians believe they can, and will, deliver a powerful blow with the brigades trained by NATO militaries and supplied by Western allies. And officials in Kyiv believe they can do better than the “moderate territorial gains” forecast by the Pentagon, according to leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents.
