The Biden administration and Western officials have focused their efforts to help Ukraine by sending gear, equipment, and weaponry that might help the Ukrainians beat back the Russian invaders.
But in a war of attrition—where the Russians are willing to outwait the Ukrainians and grind them down until Moscow gets the upper hand—Ukrainian casualties are mounting. And questions are starting to trickle through the halls of Congress about whether Ukraine will one day have enough personnel to man the equipment the United States is sending.
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA), the vice-chair of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, told The Daily Beast he’s “of course” concerned about Ukraine having sufficient manpower to operate equipment as the war of attrition continues and as Russia beats down Ukrainian forces.
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And as the war of attrition drags on and more Ukrainian personnel are dying, getting more Ukrainians trained up to snuff is a problem for Kyiv, according to Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO).
“That is a challenge that the Ukrainians have to solve,” said Crow, who serves on the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Defense Intelligence and Warfighter Support.
While at the beginning of the war, Ukraine was able to rely on a highly trained and competent fighting force—with experience fighting the Russians since they overran Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014—the tide is starting to change. As the war drags on, the losses are mounting for Ukraine. By Kyiv officials’ own estimates, Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 people per day. Making matters worse, Ukraine has to rotate out forces, and although it can pull in new recruits to replace them and the dead, the replacements have little to no experience.
And each new recruit requires more training, more time, and more investment to get up to snuff, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis found last month. And that will take its toll.
“The UAF’s initially positive overall performance is due in part to the experience and motivation of its personnel,” the CRS said. “High losses, however, pose an ongoing challenge to the UAF’s ability to maintain effective and sustained operations… Unlike the initial period of war when most recruits were veterans, most new recruits and volunteers have little military experience. As a result, it takes longer for the UAF to train new recruits.”
Ukraine is also facing massive pressures to train new recruits only to the “bare minimum levels,” the CRS warns, which could leave the preparations under par.
“That's why we need to just continue to make sure that we're providing the robust training—and obviously in other countries we need to provide neighboring NATO and allied countries [training]—because no doubt this war is posing some challenges to Ukraine on all fronts,” Carbajal told The Daily Beast.
As to whether the United States will reach a point where it’s not prudent to supply equipment to Ukraine if Ukrainian forces are so degraded they can’t man the gear, Carbajal said he’s eyeing the situation as a tricky balancing act.
“It’s a balance,” he said. “We need to continue to provide the equipment. We need to continue to rush training.”
But just because the Ukrainians are losing personnel, that doesn’t mean the United States should be hesitant about sending more weaponry, Rep. Eric Swalwell, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee’s Intelligence Modernization and Readiness Subcommittee, told The Daily Beast. Instead, that kind of concern has to be factored into what aid the U.S. sends already.
“In any hot conflict like this you price in… that they’re going to suffer losses and that through the losses you lose some of the training and capabilities you have,” Swalwell told The Daily Beast. “But that doesn’t mean we stop. That’s just priced into what the expectations are with a fighting force.”
Ukraine is already getting better at chipping away at Russian weapons thanks in no small part to Western aid, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday.
There have been “significant logistical losses for the Russian invaders. It is increasingly difficult for the Russian army to hold positions on the captured territory,” Zelensky said in a speech.
The administration has already sent Ukraine 12 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARs), in a move that has bolstered Ukraine’s ability to needle Russia from afar.
Some members of Congress have been buoyed by the fact that Ukrainians seem to be holding their own for now when it comes to training up quickly despite the losses.
“We have been very impressed, and the Department of Defense has reiterated this as well, about the Ukrainians’ ability to very rapidly learn new systems,” Crow told The Daily Beast, referencing the Ukrainians’ quick uptake time for the U.S.-made HIMARs multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). “They’ve done a really nice job of rotating those forces out, providing rest, retrofitting those forces off at the front line.”
But Ukraine’s problem with its manpower is not just a temporary issue. Ukraine was in the process of creating its professional noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps in an attempt to achieve interoperability with NATO before the war, but the mounting losses and failure to train personnel up fully will likely create longstanding issues for Ukraine’s armed forces, CRS assesses.
Some lawmakers think to avoid questions about manpower shortages in Ukraine—and whether the United States can continue providing weapons—the U.S. needs to step up the weaponry and equipment aid, and fast.
“No doubt they’re going through those unfortunate growing pains during an actual war,” Carbajal told The Daily Beast. “We now just have to go with what we have, and do what we can.”
“I think the issue of the speed and quantity of the equipment is far more acute than personnel shortages at this point,” Crow said. “We’re going to have to continue to keep munitions and equipment flowing fast.”
The United States has stumbled here once before in a way that may have gotten Ukraine in a pickle already, according to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The Biden administration slow-rolled the decision to provide Ukrainians with certain long-range weaponry in recent weeks for fear of escalating tensions with Moscow. But in doing so, the United States gave the Russians a leg-up by letting them carry on with their offensives.
“By us hesitating giving them long-range precision fires, we actually… created a vacuum that allowed Russia to use their methods… their bombardment and… incremental gains to succeed,” Gallego said.
The Biden administration has an opportunity right now to nip these concerns in the bud, Gallego said. In order to not muck up the battlefield from here on out, the United States should take swift action to deliver higher powered weaponry to Ukraine while Ukraine has enough personnel to use it.
“It’s very risky for us to plan for war of attrition and not to arm Ukraine to win this decisively. I think when you plan for long-term wars, you create long-term wars,” Gallego said. “There’s still an opportunity to do this. But we have to commit ourselves to doing this and doing it fast.”
“And let me tell you, a country like Russia has survived and will win the long war,” Gallego added.
Behind the scenes right now, the Biden administration is preparing to announce more aid to Ukraine later this week.
The next tranche of aid will include more HIMARs, John Kirby, a White House National Security Council coordinator, told reporters in a briefing Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Wednesday there will be four new HIMARs launchers in the next package.
