Putin Isn’t Scared of Ukraine’s $61 Billion Boost

Anyone who thinks that the $61 billion for Ukraine will intimidate Putin, raise your hand.

Now, go sit in the corner.

aei.org

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American aid will undoubtedly bolster Ukraine’s defenses. It probably won’t be enough to help this Ukrainian military — which has shown little talent for complex operations against well-prepared positions — evict the enemy from its land. And even if Ukraine does stymie Russian attacks and inflict awful casualties on Moscow’s forces, there’s no guarantee Putin will call it quits.

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The politics of aid have gotten more difficult in Washington, so don’t expect many more big tranches of assistance for Kyiv. If Trump is elected in November, US policy could change dramatically. The US may just have convinced Putin that he won’t win the war by default this year. It probably hasn’t convinced him that he can’t outlast the West, and Ukraine, over time.

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Even if Putin faces growing problems in 2025 and after, he still runs a larger, stronger country confronting a smaller, weaker one. And whatever pain Western sanctions have inflicted has been offset by the remarkable quantities of aid, economic and military, that his autocratic brethren in North Korea, Iran and China have been willing to provide.

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Can Kyiv build a military that is capable of busting through layered, well-defended Russian lines? Can Europe ramp up ammunition production to sustain the Ukrainian military if and when America pulls back? Will the US and its allies agree to seize frozen Russian assets and deliver them to Ukraine? Are they willing to do things — like driving Putin’s oil off the global market or having a sanctions showdown with Chinese banks involved in trade with Russia — that are necessary to really tighten the economic squeeze?

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Perhaps most vexing: If Putin can’t conquer Ukraine, but won’t stop fighting, how far will the US and NATO go to force Russia to bring the war to an end?
That $61 billion in US aid has bought time to address these issues. It hasn’t provided any easy answers. As the potential for near-term disaster in Ukraine recedes, the longer-term dilemmas come right back into view.

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