Just when it seemed most critical for the United States to give Ukraine more powerful tools to blunt Russia’s brutal bombardments, President Joe Biden refused to get the U.S. involved in Poland’s plan to transfer MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. He did it, he said, to avoid World War III. But in doing so, he inadvertently raised the risk of such a war.
American timidity on air support reduces the likelihood of Russia’s retreat from Ukraine. Even without direct support from the U.S., the Ukrainian military has valiantly slowed the Russian invasion. But in response, Russia started indiscriminately bombarding cities, block by block, killing and wounding, degrading infrastructure, choking off vital supplies.
Chernihiv (population 285,000), Kharkiv (1.5 million), Sumy (265,000) and Mariupol (446,000) are reduced to a familiar landscape of death and ruin, like Guernica, like Stalingrad, like Grozny, like Aleppo. The capital, Kyiv, is now on the line. The pleas of pregnant women escaping from a bombed-out maternity hospital, the sight of dead bodies piling up in city streets and other horrors of war give Russian President Vladimir Putin confidence that the hurt will eventually bring Ukraine to its knees. A retreat is less likely with every mile that Russia gains.
