West Must Brace for Long-Term War With Russia

The West must brace for a long-term rivalry with Moscow that risks going beyond the current conflict, France’s top general has said.

General Thierry Burkhard, the overall chief of staff for the French armed forces, told AFP in an interview that Europe needed to re-arm and strengthen its own unity for what will be a period of “long competition” with Russia.

President “Vladimir Putin has said it himself: We are not just talking about Ukraine but the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary,” Burkhard said in the joint interview with the New York Times in Estonia, where French troops are deployed as part of NATO forces.

“We must be well aware that the Russians have a long-term strategy,” he added, pointing to the emphasis Moscow has placed on developing specialized capacities, including hypersonic weapons.

“They are engaged an informational struggle and they have put the West under a form of energy dependency. Our lack of freedom of action comes from being in this spider’s web put in place by Russia.”

But he emphasized that Russia’s assault against Ukraine, had “not gone as planned” and that the initial aim had been to topple Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who remains in power.

“This will impose a pause on the Russian long-term strategy,” he said.

“Europe must take advantage of this to reorganize and also build its long-term strategy, planning for the day after the Ukrainian war. We must re-arm, strengthen cohesion and put ourselves in a position to be competitors with the Russians,” he said.

Burkhard also emphasized that as a nuclear-armed permanent UN Security Council member Russia is “not going to disappear” and that while seeking to weaken the country the West may also need to rebuild a “security architecture” with Moscow.

Burkhard argued that the conflict is now in a third phase with Russia seeking to seize control of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Unlike in the first phase, Russia’s military deployment is “coherent” with 80-90 percent of their forces in the Donbas compared with 20 percent in the first phase, he said.

Burkhard said that Russia’s shortcomings in the first phase of the war had shown the importance of high morale, a domain where the Ukrainians has clearly won.

Ukraine had also won the information war while Russia had also fallen short in high-intensify warfare for which its troops were not trained despite their superiority in numbers.

The conflict has “shown the importance of training, which is costly and difficult,” he said.

Biden Announces New $150 Million Military Aid

The Biden administration announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $150 million, as the war-weary country enters its 11th week of conflict with Russia.

The Pentagon said the next tranche of weapons will include 25,000 155mm artillery rounds, three AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars and electronic jamming equipment.

The latest military aid package, the ninth security assistance installment, brings the U.S. military aid commitment to $3.8 billion since Moscow announced a military operation in its neighbor in late February.

The $150 million pledged on Friday comes from the remaining $250 million in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the president to transfer excess weapons from U.S. arsenals without congressional approval.

Last month, Biden requested $33 billion from Congress after he exhausted his remaining drawdown authority. He reiterated his request on Friday by saying that for Ukraine to succeed against Russia, the U.S. and its allies must continue to flow weapons and ammunition into the country.

“Congress should quickly provide the requested funding to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” Biden said in a statement announcing the additional funding.

The last military aid package of $800 million before Friday, announced on April 21, included 72 howitzers, 144,000 artillery rounds and more than 121 rapidly-developed “Ghost” tactical drones.

Since the war began on Feb. 24, the Biden administration has deployed more than 100,000 U.S. troops to NATO-member countries.

The NATO alliance has also placed more than 140 warships and 130 aircraft on heightened alert. In addition, the 30-member-strong group has consistently warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that an attack on one NATO member state will be viewed as an attack on all, triggering the group’s cornerstone Article 5.
Russia’s most senior lawmaker on Saturday accused Washington of coordinating military operations in Ukraine, which he said amounted to direct US. .involvement in military action against Russia.
“Washington is essentially coordinating and developing military operations, thereby directly participating in military actions against our country,” Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel.
Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday said it had destroyed a large stockpile of military equipment from the United States and European countries near the Bohodukhiv railway station in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
The ministry said it had hit 18 Ukrainian military facilities overnight, including three ammunition depots in Dachne, near the port city of Odesa.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said in a statement an armed drone had destroyed a Serna-class landing craft and a missile defense system near the Black Sea’s Snake Island.
The military said in a separate statement on social media that the Bayraktar drone strike had also destroyed a Tor-M2 anti-aircraft system being delivered to the island.
Ukraine, which has sought NATO membership since 2002, is bordered by four NATO allies: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that there was hostile rhetoric coming out of Poland, and that Warsaw could be “a source of threat”.
Poland has led calls for the EU to toughen sanctions and for the Western NATO alliance to arm Ukraine.
Stanislaw Zaryn, a spokesman for the Polish security services, said that Russia has been conducting a coordinated disinformation campaign against Poland for several days, including suggestions it could be a threat to Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
“The aim of Russian actions is to create distrust between Poland and Ukraine, as well as to slander Poland and present it as a dangerous country generating conflicts in Eastern Europe,” he wrote in an emailed comment.
Polish Environment and Climate Minister Anna Moskwa said on Monday that “Poland is proud to be on Putin’s list of unfriendly countries.”