What shifting armaments and sentiments mean for the state of the war.
One year ago, the Russian Army invaded Ukraine in an attempt to rewrite the European order. But the resistance has been fiercer than anyone imagined, and now the Ukrainian and Russian Armies are poised for dueling offensives as the spring begins. |
At the forefront of a Ukrainian offensive might well be some of the best weapons in the world — tanks supplied by allied nations that could prove to be the difference in the war. |
"Those tanks were some of the first evidence of a shift to offensive weaponry from foreign nations," writes David Axe in a guest essay on the new hardware. "That shift accelerated over the summer as the United States and other allies began sending armored personnel carriers — fast-moving, tracked vehicles that transport infantry into battle so they can support the tanks that usually lead any attack." |
The new armor, Axe argues, has increased the stakes of the war substantially. Perhaps the most important thing to watch now is not only how the Russian Army responds to those new weapons on the battlefield but also how it responds to the nations that have supplied them. |
The writer Oksana Zabuzhko has deeper questions for Ukraine's allies — namely, why did it take so long to confront an aggressive and ambitious Russian state? "Was it guilty pleasure that for decades made the elites of the former Western empires smile indulgently, rather than shudder, when faced with the brazen colonial supremacy with which Moscow was treating its non-Russian subjects?" she writes. "I fail to see any other reasonable explanation for why so many in the West clung to the irrational belief that democratic transformation in Russia was just around the corner." |
At a security conference held in Munich last weekend, Ukraine's allies seemed entirely rational in their assessment of the current threat. In fact, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany went further than his colleagues may have anticipated, given how reluctant Germany has been to supply arms, when he said that countries with stocks of battle tanks should send them to Ukraine. He also committed to spending the NATO target of 2 percent of G.D.P. on defense. |
That is a remarkable turnaround for a nation that has spent the postwar decades trying to avoid military entanglements. |
Russia was hoping to rearrange the European order when it invaded Ukraine. Turns out it did just that. Though not in the way Vladimir Putin intended. |
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