Up until now, the theory of the case for the United States and the European powers has been to support Ukraine as it gains the strongest possible position on the battlefield, which will put the Ukrainians in the best possible position for negotiations. With the war having ground to effective stalemate, we appear to have reached that point, with Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, admitting as much in an early November interview.
Those involved in the fighting were not saying any of that, at least not in September. They were very clear on what was and was not needed to win the war. “F-16s are expensive, need ammunition, easy to shoot down, a waste of money,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, the commander of Ukraine’s Georgian legion, a unit of about 1,600 Georgians and a collection of volunteers from a dozen other regions, including Japan and Latin America. (The Americans and Brits don’t last long, he told me. They like sleeping in beds.) What the war effort really needs right now, he told me, are High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, shells; ATACMS missiles; and other ammunition, not big, sexy items like F-16 fighter jets.
We were sitting at a picnic table in a former summer camp on the outskirts of Kyiv, near swings and a jungle gym. He’s been fighting the Russians since he was a 14-year-old kid, he tells me. He’s in his mid-forties now, a large man, who reminded me of a more fit Nick Frost. Every few minutes, one of his troops whizzes by on an electric scooter fitted with big off-road tires. The unit is testing them out for use in the field, Mamuka said. They can go 50 miles on a single charge, move quietly, and carry 300 pounds of weight, more than enough for a soldier and gear. Another example of the innovations this war has produced, in response to the requirement to do more with less.