President Biden Orders a Surge for Ukraine to Win the War; Putin’s Best Option Is to Pack His Bags and Run.
The surge has begun
I tried every trick in my arsenal to take my mind off President Biden’s statement on September 26th, 2024. I tried Netflix. It didn’t work. I tried following YouTube rabbit holes. That didn’t cut it either. I even looked at polling data, but that didn’t help.
I kept going back to the same question: Did he really say that? Did he really mean it? It was the first time he used the word “win.” It took two and a half years for him to finally say that three-letter word — the one that probably gives nightmares to his National Security Advisor. So many things about the September 26th statement didn’t fit the usual pattern. Some of it was the regular dragging of feet, but at its core, the statement broke the established pattern.
This is the first time the President said he is taking actions to help “Ukraine win this war.” If my memory serves me right, it’s also the first time he released a statement explaining the actions taken by his administration to assist Ukraine. Instead of allowing officials to explain what was being done, President Biden took full ownership of the administration’s decisions.
Of course, the buck always stops with him, but it has usually been his national security team explaining what’s being done. This time, the President became the explainer-in-chief.
That was new.
President Biden also announced that he will utilize the entire $5.5 billion in drawdown authority granted by Congress. He said there will be a “surge in security assistance for Ukraine,” and then he provided details, which are generally lacking.
He said:
I have directed the Department of Defense to allocate all of its remaining security assistance funding that has been appropriated for Ukraine by the end of my term in office.
After allocating $2.4 billion in security assistance through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) in the latest aid package, the administration still has atleast $5 billion left to be contracted to defense manufacturers. President Biden has directed the Department of Defense to use all of it before January 20, 2025. This means the administration needs to place over a billion dollars’ worth of orders every month from now on.
But this is USAI funding, which requires placing orders with defense manufacturers. They need to produce the weapons and then deliver them to Ukraine, a process that will take months. It can’t be called a surge since it will be a while before those weapons are seen on the battlefield. However, the term “surge” wasn’t used lightly in the President’s statement. That document would have gone through multiple rounds of review before being released. It likely crossed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s desk before being made public.
The term “surge” can only be justified if the administration plans to use the funds from the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to draw weapons from American stockpiles and send them directly to Ukraine. However, the President’s statement did not specify a timeline for using the PDA funds.
Shortly after the President’s statement, the State Department clarified when they intend to exercise the PDA.
By doing so, the United States will be able to continue to provide a surge in defense articles and services to Ukraine from DoD stocks under planned drawdowns in the weeks and months ahead. These drawdowns have been made possible by strong bipartisan support from Congress.
The administration plans to execute the PDA by January 20, 2025. They didn’t state it explicitly, but that’s the implication. This means $5.5 billion in weapons could reach Ukraine before President Biden leaves office. Additionally, the USAI order for another $5 billion would likely start flowing by then, ensuring a steady supply of weapons for Ukraine in the first half of 2025.
President Biden has Trump-MAGA proofed Ukraine’s future
On September 29th, during his first direct meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump highlighted his great relationship with Putin and vowed to end the war swiftly.
We have a very good relationship. I also have a very good relationship with President Putin and you know, I think if we win we’re going to get it resolved very quickly — Donald Trump
Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to President Zelenskyy as the greatest salesman on earth. It’s fairly clear how he plans to resolve the war quickly: simply stop the flow of weapons to Ukraine. Job done. Putin has spoken about this in the past.
If one just stops, it will all die in a week. The same applies to the defence system. Just imagine the aid stops tomorrow. It will live for only a week when they run out of ammo — Putin said in Sochi, October 2023
President Biden will leave office in January 2025 after fully utilizing the Ukraine supplemental aid package approved by Congress in April 2024. This ensures Ukraine’s supply of weapons in both the short and long term. Even if Trump wins the election, there’s nothing he can do to change that.
How Will the American Surge Impact the War?
A short, intense conflict is the best way to secure victory. It costs less and brings the war to a quicker end.
Following a bipartisan meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Republican Senator John Cornyn stated, “The message is that the longer we slow-walk the weapons and put restrictions on their use against Russian stockpiles, energy resources, and the like, the longer this war will go on. If we were to give them the authority to use the weapons as they see fit and deliver them in a timely manner, I think President Zelenskyy believes this war has a better chance of being resolved at the negotiating table.”
This was before President Biden decided to accelerate the delivery of defense articles to Ukraine. It’s still unclear whether the administration will authorize Ukraine to strike deep inside Russian territory with American weapons, but that’s a discussion for another day. The decision to surge weapons comes at an extremely critical time.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the importance of the next four to eight weeks. I said:
The next four to eight weeks will be crucial. This is a massive opportunity for both Europe and Ukraine — such openings don’t come often. They knock once or twice, and if you’re not ready to seize the moment, the door closes sooner or later.
Putin can be forced to make a choice: he can either counterattack in Kursk or in occupied Ukraine. Of course, there will always be smaller movements here and there, but the larger point is clear — Russia will have to defend its positions in occupied Ukraine if they want to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.
The reason is straightforward: Russia is running low on tanks and armored personnel carriers, severely limiting their troop mobility on the battlefield. Mass artillery and mass infantry were their two main advantages. After two years of war and a high casualty rate — approaching 1,500 per day — the Russian army is struggling to recruit. Mass infantry is no longer a Russian advantage.
The situation with artillery is similar. Russia is now heavily dependent on North Korea to meet its daily artillery needs. This month, two Ukrainian attacks on Russian storage facilities in Toropets and Tikhoretsk destroyed over 30,000 tons of ammunition. Intelligence reports suggest Russia may have lost three to four months’ worth of supplies.
The Kremlin is at an extremely vulnerable point. Their combat power is under immense stress and is waning. Given time, Putin will try to address this issue, which is why I emphasized that the next four to eight weeks are crucial. There is now an opportunity to significantly boost Ukraine’s combat power.
Even a short-term increase in combat capability could deliver severe blows to the Russian army. Once a military force hits a downward spiral, it’s challenging to recover — it takes time.
It’s a heavy lift. Even with support from the United States and Germany, it took Ukraine nearly six months to regain near-parity with Russia after almost running out of ammunition earlier this year, and they are still slightly behind.
If it took Ukraine that long with Western support, Russia, relying on North Korea and Iran, will need much longer to recover. It won’t be enough.
The surge in weapons won’t only come from the United States. Germany has been sending large arms packages at regular intervals since the start of the year and continues to do so at a rapid pace, likely to compensate for the slow pace of American aid from May to September this year.
Now, with the U.S. also delivering weapons at an increased pace, Ukraine will be able to fully equip the ten brigades awaiting arms over the next four to eight weeks. They already have around five equipped brigades in reserve.
That’s 15 brigades that can come online over the next eight weeks. Putin needs to order full mobilization. But with the way things are going in Kursk, he is not going to be extremely comfortable in taking that decision.
Ukraine must work closely with the United States.
There are still a few issues to be resolved, but before they can be addressed, Ukraine and the U.S. need to put the past behind them. There’s no point in rehashing past mistakes. It’s clear that both administrations have had differing views on how to conduct the war.
I’m not sure how they will bridge that gap, but they need to sit down and agree on what types of weapons should be delivered to Ukraine and when. Ukraine needs clear visibility into the weapons supply schedule. If they can achieve that, which I believe is the key issue to be addressed, the end of Putin’s imperial ambitions could be closer than it seems.
It’s over.
All Ukraine needs to do now is execute. Even they probably didn’t expect this level of support. President Zelenskyy’s comments to the bipartisan group of senators indicate he didn’t anticipate a surge in weapons.
But President Biden has stepped up and given them a significant opportunity. It’s up to them now to make it count. It’s no accident that the President used the words “surge” and “win” in his statement.
Thank you, President Biden. Thank you, House. Thank you, Senate. As one of my readers said, democracy does work.
One piece of advice for the Kremlin: Call President Biden and ask for a face-saving exit. It might be your only viable option at this point.
Thanks for reading. The mainstream media seems clueless and perhaps uninterested. Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to make critical information about Ukraine accessible. That’s why I’ve made 290 stories available to the public in 2024, including this one.
