Russia-Ukraine War: Lessons that Biden Failed to Learn and Ukraine Paid Hefty Price For

As we welcome the New Year and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is approaching its second anniversary, many on both sides of the Atlantic are wondering whether the biggest war in Europe since World War II will come to an end this year. After all, Washington already has supplied to Kiev more than $113 billion in cash and high-tech weaponry, and US President Joe Biden is trying to strongarm Congress into approving another $67 billion. Regretfully, the answer is a resounding “No.”
Contrary to the hopes of many, not only will 2024 not bring peace, it will likely see more bloodshed, as the key warring parties – Russia, Ukraine, and the United States (by proxy) – are all postured for an endless war. None of the conflict participants appear to be interested in ending the hostilities. To the contrary, all three are incentivized to keep going.
Russian President Putin is increasing the maximum number of Russian armed forces by 170,000 servicemen, to its full-strength of 1,320,000 personnel. He also has recently approved a major increase in military spending. In 2024, expenditures on defense and security combined will reach 40 percent of Russia’s budget, a 70 percent increase from 2023. Russia’s 2024 revenue target of $391.2 billion is based on high oil prices. The Russian government is attracting new recruits by offering a staggering sum of money for signing to serve in the military. Contract soldiers who join the so called ‘elite combat division’ get paid a whopping one million rubles (around $11,000 ).
Despite the ultimate failure of the summer counter-offensive, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky refuses to give up. Zelensky announced a “new phase of war” on November 30, having acknowledged persistent shortages of weaponry, shriveling forces, and the risk of losing the flow of security assistance and military hardware from the United States and Europe, as the Israel-Hamas conflict has overshadowed the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Look, we are not backing down, I am satisfied,” Zelenskyy said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in Kharkov in northeastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian comedian-turned- president, continues to plead the White House for more American greenbacks, having sent a delegation of his top officials to Washington last week.
“Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME magazine in October, despite the fact that his own top general recently admitted that the war was unwinnable. The commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, in an interview in The Economist on November 1st , said "there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough," speaking about the conflict’s stalemate.
Although it is clear to any serious intelligence analyst that Ukraine has no military path to victory, President Biden continues to repeat his 'as long as it takes' mantra, which pretty much summarizes the misguided and failed policy of his Administration towards the Russia-Ukraine conflict. On December 6, at the virtual meeting of the G7 nations -- comprising Japan, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and the European Union -- Biden reiterated America’s commitment to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
“Do not let Putin win,” Biden implored Republicans on the same day, urging them to approve additional funding to Kiev. The US Senate blocked the $110 billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel because Republican lawmakers refused to support it without major changes to Biden’s border policy, as foreign migrants have been flooding the United States through its Southern border.
"If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there," said Biden, likely aiming to frighten everyone that Putin would attack a NATO ally. Biden threatened the possibility of American forces having to fight Russian troops, if Ukraine runs out of money. This scare tactic contradicts Washington’s own narrative that the Russian military is so weak and incompetent that it couldn’t even topple Kiev and Zelensky. Does Biden truly believe that Putin is a idiot, or a suicidal lunatic? An attack on a NATO country would trigger the Article 5 “collective defense” clause, putting Russia in a direct kinetic clash with the US and NATO forces that are conventionally superior to Moscow’s military. Unlike Biden, Putin – although a ruthless leader -- is a rational thinker and highly intelligent. Putin’s primary goal is to restore Russia’s strategic security buffer, by ensuring that no former Soviet state, other than the Baltics, will become part of NATO. Moscow finds the risk of the adversarial alliance stationing forces, bases or military hardware in close proximity to Russia’s borders unacceptable, just as Washington would find the presence of China or Russia’s military assets in Canada or Mexico equally unacceptable.
Biden may be surprised to learn this but Vladimir Putin already has won the war in Ukraine, based on his definition of victory. Putin invaded Ukraine to enforce his red line, keeping Ukraine out of NATO. He has accomplished this goal. So long as Ukrainian forces are engaged in a protracted fight with the Russians and Kiev does not control all of Ukrainian land, Ukraine does not meet the admission requirements – sovereignty, territorial integrity and absence of an on-going conflict.
Moreover, Ukraine is no longer a viable country as it cannot exist independently, without foreign financial support. Once called the “bread basket of Europe,” today, Ukraine is in ruins. Its agricultural base is destroyed and industrial foundation, including critical infrastructure, is severely damaged, as its urban centers and rural areas have been pounded, relentlessly by Russian missiles and artillery strikes, during almost two years of ground combat. To crown it all, Ukraine, the largest country on the continent, is being depopulated, with casualties approaching a quarter of a million dead or severely wounded, and millions of citizens displaced.
This unconscionable humanitarian tragedy is a result of Washington’s strategic incompetence and President Biden’s naïve and incompetent foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine. Only historically illiterate bunch would think that inviting Ukraine -- on which Russia relied, for centuries, for its security – was a brilliant idea. Incredibly, the “experts” of Washington, the birthplace of the Monroe Doctrine, failed to anticipate that Putin who is in charge of “the second (best) army in the world,” according to Zelensky’s own admission to the Associated Press.
President Biden failed to learn from the Afghanistan fiasco that money and technology do not win wars. Strategy does. Team Biden never bothered to develop one. As a former senior official in the US Defense Intelligence Agency and one of the top three analysts on Russian doctrine and strategy in the intelligence community, I personally briefed President Obama’s White House national security staff on Putin’s plans and Russia’s war-fighting strategy multiple times. I also briefed countless top US military commanders and Pentagon officials, as well as NATO ministers and military leaders.
As vice president at the time, the go-to person on Ukraine policy, and the architect of the failed Russia "reset" strategy, Joe Biden had to be made aware of those briefings. President Biden and his team, many members of which, including his then-national security adviser and current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, joined him in his administration, must have received similar briefings prior to and during his presidency, given Russia’s ranking by the US intelligence community as a Tier 1 threat to US security.
The US president had ample time to act to deter Putin, negotiate a peaceful solution, prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and avoid the exorbitant outflows of US taxpayers’ earnings to Kiev for what has become an unwinnable war. Instead, Biden has chosen to have Ukrainians pay for his failures with their blood. Alternatively, and quite possibly, Team Biden intentionally prolonged the Russia-Ukraine war by flowing weaponry to Kiev, in order to weaken Russia’s military and economy – just as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated a few months ago.
With Russia's population being more than three times of Ukraine's and Putin’s preparedness to throw more and more bodies at the problem, it looks like Washington will be fighting Moscow until the last Ukrainian – all in the name of upholding "freedom and democracy.”

Children have returned to school in Gaza, taking classes in tents or in the rubble of schools where families sheltered during the war, but trauma, aid blockades and the threat of more fighting could derail their drive to learn.

At least 14,500 children were killed in the war and thousands wounded, according to UNICEF. More than 400 teachers were also killed, the UN says, and now most of Gaza's children need mental health support for trauma, aid agencies say.

Children are not necessarily just picking up from where they left off when the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, "because of all the learning loss and the deep psychological impact of the war," said Kate McLennan, Middle East regional advisor on education at rights group War Child.

"There is also trauma attached to schools, which are generally understood as places of learning and safety and where you go to play with your friends (but have) been used as shelters," she said, Reuters reported.

"So, there is that alternative use of a school which has a psychological impact on children."

A fragile truce was declared between Hamas and Israel in January and as of March 3, more than 150,000 students had enrolled in 165 government schools, with over 7,000 teachers mobilised, the UN said, citing the Education Ministry in Gaza.

But the challenges are huge.

More than 658,000 school-aged children do not have access to formal education and almost 95% of school buildings have been damaged by Israeli strikes and fighting with 88% of them needing major reconstruction, said a report by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster, which includes UN agencies and other international aid groups.

Desks and chairs have been pulverised and teaching materials destroyed while reconstruction has been delayed by aid blockades by Israel.

The blockades have impeded efforts to establish more learning spaces and rebuild damaged schools, said Alun McDonald, head of media and external relations at Islamic Relief, a British-based charity.

"Hundreds of large tents that were meant to be used for temporary learning spaces have been blocked from entering (Gaza), even during the ceasefire period," McDonald said.

The head of the Palestinian relief agency (UNRWA) has warned there could be another hunger crisis if the blockades continue. Israel says the blockades are designed to pressure Hamas in ceasefire talks.

"Children can't learn when they are being starved and bombed," McDonald said. "Getting children back into school is an urgent priority, but the challenges are absolutely massive."

LEARNING IMPEDED BY TRAUMA

This month Israel stopped deliveries of food, medicine and fuel into Gaza and cut electricity supply in a bid to pressure Hamas. Aid agencies said the power cut could threaten clean water supplies.

Around 32,000 students have registered to take their final high school exams, according to the UN, but there is a lack of tablets, internet access and charging stations to facilitate the process.

There is also a shortage of large tents and recreational and psycho-social kits to help students learn because of restrictions on aid, including the blocking of 10 pre-approved trucks carrying basic education supplies in February, UN agencies said.

But it is not just the physical damage and shortages that are holding children back.

"One of the things that we know from our work in all conflict and post-conflict and development contexts is that the psychological trauma and the psychosocial support needs of children are so high that it's related to brain development as well," said McLennan.

"The academic content is not going to stick if the conditions of the brain are not ready to ... deal with that," she said.

A study by academics and UNRWA last year said the war could set the education of children in Gaza back by up to five years.

"The lost education will affect an entire generation of children in Gaza for the rest of their lives," McDonald said.

Russia-Ukraine War: Lessons that Biden Failed to Learn and Ukraine Paid Hefty Price For