Additional funding of Ukraine’s military will only lead to more deaths, Lt. Colonel David Davis says
Ukrainian infantryman in a trench. © Getty Images / Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu via Getty Images
Further military aid to Ukraine will prolong the conflict with Russia without yielding a positive result, a retired US Army officer has argued, amid a rift in Congress over whether to release funds for Kiev.
The US administration has so far failed to get Congressional approval for $61.4 billion in support for Ukraine, which is part of a larger $106 billion supplemental spending bill.
David L. Davis, a retired lieutenant colonel and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, who is currently working as an analyst at a Washington-based think tank, gave his take on the dispute on Tuesday, saying: “It’s pointless to just give another $60 billion to Ukraine so that they can just continue the war on for the another year without result, except that another several hundred thousand Ukrainian people will die for nothing.”
Speaking on his ‘Daniel Davis / Deep Dive’ podcast, he said Ukraine was not able to turn the tables “when they had everything that the West could give them,” let alone “now that [the West] don’t have that stuff to give.”
In December, US President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass the supplemental package, but Republican lawmakers have so far stalled the process, locking their approval to demands for border security and immigration reforms.
Also in December, a €50 billion ($54.6 billion) EU aid package aimed at helping Kiev was vetoed by Hungary at the European Council.
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Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced in December that his military had urged him to mobilize an additional 450,000 to 500,000 soldiers to cover the deficit caused by battlefield losses. This was followed by a mobilization bill on lowering the conscription age in Ukraine from 27 to 25.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive – launched in early June – has stalled without substantial territorial gains. While Kiev has been reluctant to publish data on its casualties, the Russian Ministry of Defense has estimated them to be at around 160,000 dead and wounded for the counteroffensive alone. The total number of Ukrainian battlefield casualties is more than 383,000, Moscow’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at a cabinet meeting in December.
