In late summer time of 2022, Ukraine launched a significant counteroffensive within the nation’s south. On Nov. 11, that operation resulted within the liberation of town of Kherson and all of the beforehand Russian-occupied areas west of the Dnipro River.
Amid the euphoria of Ukraine’s return to Kherson, little consideration was paid to the exceptional escape of Moscow’s trapped forces. Over the course of a number of weeks, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Russian troopers, together with elite models that had been despatched to fortify the entrance, and big troves of army tools, had been safely evacuated throughout the Dnipro utilizing ferries, pontoons, and a bridge that the Ukrainians had beforehand made partially impassable. The Ukrainians had been hitting the crossing with rocket artillery forward of the retreat, however then all however stopped firing on the susceptible bottleneck for a number of weeks as the majority of the Russian forces crossed. “Withdrawing from Kherson in good order was Russia’s most profitable army operation of all the battle,” George Barros, who heads the Russia workforce on the Institute for the Examine of Struggle informed International Coverage. Had this pressure been annihilated or compelled to give up, it could have marked a turning level within the battle—and an incredible humiliation of the Kremlin earlier than all the world.
My current conversations on background with a number of high-ranking Ukrainian officers supply insights into these occasions. First, the retreat occurred amid U.S. worries {that a} humiliating defeat may provoke a Russian tactical nuclear response. Second, Ukraine was wanting ammunition with the vary to hit the river crossing, partially a results of Washington’s strict limits on the type and quantity of equipment it provided. Regardless of the exact fact behind the Russians’ surprisingly unmolested retreat, which can stay a secret properly after the battle is concluded, the occasions round Kherson had been emblematic of the way in which during which Ukraine’s hand has been tightly circumscribed all through the battle by the circulation of U.S. and different Western weapons—and the restrictions positioned on their use.
Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Feb. 20, 2023.Yan Dobronosov/World Pictures Ukraine through Getty Pictures
President Donald Trump has typically referred to as the Russia-Ukraine battle “Biden’s battle.” Trump’s declare that former President Joe Biden is personally chargeable for the invasion is, in fact, fallacious: Sole duty rests with Russian President Vladimir Putin—not Biden and never Ukraine, as Trump has additionally claimed. As most everybody besides Trump appears to know, Putin has lengthy questioned Ukraine’s legitimacy and has coveted its territory since no less than 2014, when he launched Russia’s first land seize with the invasion of Crimea and occupation of the Donbas. Given the size of Putin’s ambitions, it was solely a matter of time earlier than he launched a full-scale battle.
However it’s Biden’s battle in a really completely different sense: To at the present time, the invasion has been largely formed by the Biden administration’s choices about when and how you can arm Ukraine—and by the way in which the US used army support as leverage to constrain how Ukraine fights its battle. These White Home choices, in flip, considerably decided the contours of Russia’s conquests. Ukraine’s present army posture, the territories it controls, and its excessive civilian and army casualties are all to a big diploma formed by the boundaries the Biden administration positioned on how Ukraine may wage its battle—limits which stay in place to at the present time.
To make certain, Biden’s Ukraine legacy isn’t solely unfavorable. With out his administration’s substantial assist and his profitable efforts at shaping a world coalition to assist Kyiv, Ukraine possible wouldn’t have held on to some 80 p.c of its territory. Nor may Russia’s advances have been slowed to a debilitating crawl. Had Trump been in energy, he may need most popular enterprise offers with Moscow relatively than supporting Kyiv. Nonetheless, Biden’s extreme warning and tight constraints on how Ukraine may struggle nearly definitely contributed to the stalling of Ukraine’s speedy counteroffensives within the fall of 2022 and to the truth that, to at the present time, Russia feels little strain to conclude the battle and search a settlement on any phrases however its personal.
Biden cared deeply concerning the destiny of Ukraine and deserves enormous credit score for expertly shaping unity, burden-sharing, coordination of help, and cooperation amongst NATO allies and different democracies. Certainly, the robust solidarity European leaders have proven lately—and most dramatically of their assembly with Trump within the Oval Workplace on Aug. 18—is a legacy of Biden’s extremely efficient coalition constructing.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Zelensky and different European leaders within the White Home on Aug. 18.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP through Getty Pictures
However the failings of the Biden workforce and its extreme warning in aiding Ukraine’s army mustn’t escape sincere appraisal.
The primary failing—a legacy of the Obama years, when Biden was vp—was Biden’s refusal to considerably arm Ukraine over the course of the huge Russian army build-up on Ukraine’s borders that started in March 2021, just some weeks into his administration. Regardless of Ukraine’s entreaties for brand spanking new weapons to enhance the anti-tank weapons offered by the primary Trump administration, Biden did nothing.
Even after Washington ready to ship a modest $200 million greenback arms bundle, Biden dragged his toes on sending the help for concern of escalating tensions with Putin. In line with an NBC Information article from mid-December 2021, Biden determined to withhold the help to “give extra time for diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions.” The delay in support thus continued for a lot of essential weeks after U.S. intelligence had already concluded that Russia was making ready for a full-scale assault on Ukraine, based on a well-sourced report within the Washington Put up. Because of Biden’s delays, solely a portion of the comparatively meager support bundle was transferred by the point Russia attacked in February 2022. Coupled with Biden successfully endorsing the Russo-German Nord Stream 2 gasoline pipeline and the humiliating U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Kremlin couldn’t however see all of this as signaling Washington’s weak point and lack of resolve.
Within the early levels of the battle, furthermore, the Biden workforce held again important support, because it was satisfied that Ukraine’s forces could be quickly defeated by the Russians. The administration’s defective assessments had been echoed by Samuel Charap, a Russia skilled favored by Biden’s nationwide safety workforce, who argued in International Coverage that “The West’s Weapons Gained’t Make Any Distinction to Ukraine.” One high-ranking former official in Ukraine’s authorities who was get together to conversations with the U.S. aspect informed me that he believes that Biden’s reluctance was, no less than partially, knowledgeable by the Taliban’s seize of U.S. weapons value billions of {dollars}. Biden believed that Russia would rapidly overrun Ukraine—and thus appeared to concern that the weapons may find yourself in Putin’s fingers.
Actuality proved far completely different. Anti-tank Javelins offered by the primary Trump administration, anti-tank NLAWs from Britain, and Ukraine’s personal arsenal (a mixture of domestically produced weapons and Soviet-era tools)—mixed with the daring fight operations of extremely motivated defenders below the command of Gen. Valery Zaluzhny—enabled Ukraine to beat the percentages and push Russia out of a lot of the territory it initially seized. Ukraine’s surprising successes created a gap for the Biden administration and NATO allies to lastly overcome a few of their fears and ratchet up assist.
Ukrainian troops restore a tank within the jap Ukrainian area of Donbas on June 7, 2022.Aris Messinis/AFP through Getty Pictures
But regardless of Ukraine’s main successes, Biden and his workforce failed Ukraine at just about each flip throughout the battle. They held again essential weapons and, out of an overabundance of warning, severely restricted how Kyiv may conduct its struggle for survival.
The Biden administration’s fears of nuclear escalation performed a vital function in shaping U.S. assist within the years that adopted. Conscious of those fears, the Kremlin expertly stoked them with frequent threats—a textbook case of what Soviet-era strategists referred to as “reflexive management,” a type of psychological warfare designed to form an adversary’s considering. The Biden White Home believed a variant of Obama’s concept of Russian “escalation dominance”—the concept Russia may at all times escalate the battle to negate any U.S. support. Between 2014 and the tip of Obama’s time period in 2017, this concept was his justification for denying Kyiv any deadly U.S. army help.
Whereas Russia could have contemplated using tactical nuclear weapons early within the battle, this was a danger the Ukrainians had been prepared to take. After a yr of fierce fight, important Russian defeats on the battlefield (together with giant losses of occupied territory), and the supply of latest sorts of Western weapons deliveries, the specter of escalation—insofar because it ever existed—had receded. By then, all that remained was the persistent U.S. coverage of restraining Ukraine’s efficient prosecution of the battle. The operation of that coverage is revealed in Bob Woodward’s Struggle, which stories an change on Oct. 21, 2022, during which Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin tells his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu: “We now have taken care to not do sure issues. … There are particular restrictions we’ve placed on how they’ll use the stuff we’ve given them.” Austin’s phrase reveals the essence of the Biden method to Ukraine’s battle effort, a coverage that continues to be in place to at the present time.
U.S. constraints continued even after there have been robust indications from China, Russia’s predominant strategic associate, that Putin wouldn’t resort to the nuclear choice. A high-ranking Ukrainian diplomat informed me that the Chinese language aspect had knowledgeable the Ukrainians that President Xi Jinping had clearly communicated to Putin that the nuclear choice was impermissible. Given Putin’s rising dependence on Chinese language assist, this satisfied Ukrainian officers that the Russians wouldn’t danger using nuclear weapons. But Washington persistently delayed, slow-walked, or outright opposed the switch of key weapons that would have dramatically strengthened Kyiv in its conduct of the battle.
By the tip of January 2023, U.S. jitters about Russia’s supposedly imminent use of tactical nukes had partly abated. Ukraine’s spectacular battleground efficiency in liberating Kharkiv and Kherson resulted in new Western commitments of weapons support, together with main battle tanks—at the same time as lots of the deliveries continued to be slow-walked. However Ukraine’s requests for deep strike weapons to hit army and logistics targets within the Russian rear remained unanswered, as they’d all through the Biden years.
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- A lady talks with Russian troopers in downtown Mariupol, in jap Ukraine, on April 12, 2022. Alexander Nemenov/AFP through Getty Pictures
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Contemporary graves with handwritten picket indicators. - Contemporary graves at a cemetery in Mariupol on June 2, 2022. AFP through Getty Pictures
The historic document of the Biden administration’s unwillingness to correctly arm the Ukrainians is putting. Preliminary Ukrainian requests for HIMARS multiple-rocket launchers weren’t answered till the summer time of 2022, and so they solely got here after the strategically necessary port metropolis of Mariupol, with a inhabitants of roughly 450,000, had already fallen after a grotesque siege that left town a smoldering break. Mass graves close to town point out that Ukrainian civilian and army deaths could have numbered within the tens of 1000’s. Kyiv’s entreaties for Patriot air protection methods additionally went unanswered for many of 2022 regardless of sustained, brutal Russian assaults in opposition to civilian targets in Ukrainian cities. Why even purely defensive weapons had been off-limits then stays Biden’s and then-Nationwide Safety Advisor Jake Sullivan’s secret.
It took till September 2023, greater than a yr and a half after Russia’s invasion, for the primary Abrams tanks to achieve Ukrainian forces. And it was London, not Washington, that in Might 2023 introduced that it could provide long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Kyiv. U.S. deliveries of its personal long-range missiles often called ATACMS started solely in October 2023. Even then, these missiles had been modified to restrict their vary and got here with a restriction in opposition to their use in opposition to army targets on Russian territory. In the summertime of 2024, for instance, the Ukrainians begged to be allowed to strike one in every of Russia’s predominant bomber bases solely 100 miles contained in the border, solely to have their requests denied. The restriction was partially lifted solely in November 2024.
It additionally seems that the Biden administration pressured Kyiv to not strike sure Russian army and logistical targets even by itself sovereign territory. A New York Occasions report disclosed U.S. opposition to Ukrainian strikes on a Russian air base in Crimea and the Kerch Strait Bridge, a essential resupply hyperlink for the Russian army. The identical article additionally mentions an undisclosed Ukrainian operation that the US stopped on the Kremlin’s request.
What’s extra, the Biden administration imposed its arbitrary crimson strains all all through the battle not solely on itself and Ukraine, but in addition on European allies. These had been held again from offering sure weapons, together with tanks, long-range missiles, and European-owned F-16 fighters; as soon as the restrictions had been belatedly lifted, the fighters turned a vital component of Ukraine’s air protection in opposition to Russian assaults.
Because the Hudson Institute’s Luke Coffey has written, “delays affected the supply of cluster munitions, tanks, infantry preventing automobiles and [ATACMS]. Whereas the US ultimately licensed all these methods, its indecision price Ukraine dearly, forcing it to reply reactively as an alternative of proactively.” In different phrases, Biden compelled Ukraine to struggle Russia with one hand tied behind its again.
A pair poses in entrance of paintings depicting an explosion on the Kerch Bridge, seen in central Kyiv on Oct. 8, 2022.Sergei Supinsky/AFP through Getty Pictures
If restricted U.S. support was solely sufficient to carry the Russians at bay, it did make sure that Ukraine survived as a state. In these circumstances, the Ukrainians slowly started the event and mass manufacturing of a number of the weapons they had been being denied, together with their very own long-range missiles. It additionally purchased time for the emergence of a strong fight drone business that has reworked the battlefield.
Ukraine’s personal improvements however, Biden’s restrictions on focusing on Russia meant that Ukraine had very restricted potential to assault army and infrastructure targets inside Russia, such because the airfields used to launch bomber assaults. In 2024, the Biden administration even micromanaged using Kyiv’s personal domestically produced weapons, pressuring Ukraine to halt its drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. It seems that the Ukrainians complied, shifting to strikes on gasoline depots that created spectacular explosions however little strategic impression. Beneath Trump, that restriction is gone, and Ukraine has launched a extremely efficient drone marketing campaign in opposition to Russian refineries, with the end result that a lot of Russia now faces gasoline shortages. The success of this marketing campaign additionally proves that hitting oil infrastructure was by no means the crimson line the Biden administration imagined it to be.
Biden’s restrictions made little army sense, and so they created a stark imbalance. When Russian missiles and drones shut down electrical energy, heating, and water provides in Ukrainian cities, Ukraine had little capability to reply in type. Russian assaults have continued unabated to at the present time, killing civilians and wiping out 1000’s of Ukrainian colleges, church buildings, hospitals, house blocks, and places of work. The one-sidedness of those assaults demonstrates the continuing impact of Biden’s restrictions.
The Biden administration’s cautious method left a political legacy in the US as properly. The impasse in Ukraine created by the gradual trickle of weapons and tight restrictions on their use raised the specter of one other “endlessly battle,” which contributed to rising opposition from Trump-adjacent Republicans and sure helped Trump throughout the 2024 election marketing campaign.
Aware of rising sentiment amongst MAGA conservatives to wind down U.S. assist for Ukraine, Republican Reps. Michael McCaul, Mike Rogers, and Mike Turner issued a detailed report in January 2024 calling for weapons restrictions to be lifted, warning that the Biden administration had not developed a plan to safe an finish to the battle. The legislators charged that “[s]ince the primary day of the battle, Biden’s debilitating hesitation to supply essential weapons to Ukraine has delayed a Ukrainian victory.” They additional argued {that a} path to victory for Ukraine “would require (1) offering essential weapons to Ukraine on the velocity of relevance, (2) tightening sanctions on the Putin regime, and (3) transferring [$300 billion of] frozen Russian sovereign property to Ukraine.”
Trump echoed this criticism when he posted on Fact Social in August 2025 that “Biden wouldn’t let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, solely DEFEND. How did that work out?” These remarks however, most Biden-era constraints on Ukraine’s war-fighting stay in place below Trump. Certainly, because the Wall Avenue Journal reported on Aug. 23, the Trump administration quietly blocked Ukraine from firing long-range ATACMS in opposition to targets in Russia. Even below the brand new U.S. coverage requiring all weapons shipments to be totally paid for by Europe or Ukraine, most of those purchases stay severely restricted in kind, amount, and permitted use.
Had the Biden not imposed arbitrary crimson strains or let itself be manipulated by the Kremlin’s stoking of nuclear fears, Mariupol may not have fallen. Ukraine would certainly have saved up the momentum of its 2022 counteroffensive, liberating far more of its territory earlier than the Russians had an opportunity to dig in. Ukraine would have been capable of inflict a humiliating defeat on the retreating Russians and their tools in Kherson. It might have been capable of destroy the Russian bombers and air bases used to deliver nightly loss of life to Ukrainian civilians. Russia’s oil and gasoline business—a very powerful money cow for the Russian battle machine—would have been paralyzed. And the Kremlin may way back have come to the negotiating desk, compelled to extricate itself from an unwinnable battle.
As a substitute, Biden’s shaping of Ukraine’s battle lives on below Trump. And whereas the latter deserves some credit score for his vigorous makes an attempt to push for an finish to the preventing, he’s unlikely to succeed, because the bungled efforts of his envoy, Steve Witkoff, present. Reaching a long-lasting peace would require forcing Putin to the bargaining desk. For that to occur, Trump would first want to finish Biden’s battle by permitting Ukraine to extra successfully struggle its personal. Such a battle—sustained by European financing (together with using frozen Russian reserves), enabled by the unconstrained use of U.S. and allied weapons (together with the power to strike targets in Moscow and St. Petersburg), and accompanied by robust secondary sanctions—stays the quickest path to deliver the battle to an finish.
