The Military expert Gustav Gressel demands in view of 1,000 days of war in Ukraine one concrete exit strategy.
The West must “plan where the war should end” and what resources, i.e. equipment, weapons, ammunition, but also training and education, are needed to “get Ukraine there,” explains Gressel in an interview with the APA. Delayed help would only increase costs. If Russia wins, there is a risk of an even bigger war in Europe.
Ukraine needs vehicles
Gressel, who has been working at the Institute for Strategy and Security Policy at the National Defense Academy since November, describes Ukraine’s urgent need for armored transport vehicles, ammunition and fighter aircraft. The country attacked by Russia has “older F-16 fighter planes” with air-to-air missiles that have a better range than the previous ones, but are still “significantly inferior” to the Russian ones.
One or two squadrons of Gripen with Meteor missiles, for example, would be helpful in “pushing the Russian forces away from the front.” In addition, Ukraine has a shortage of staff officers, “upper level” officers and equipment for command structures. It would be good if the West helped Ukraine in the area of officer training and structured “lesson-learnt” processes because “we are good at setting up processes.”
Criticism of Biden politics
Gressel is critical of Biden’s policies. The administration of US President Joe Biden namely, “didn’t really have a strategy.” According to the expert, the planning for military support only lasted a few months. “They never thought through how much equipment, training, etc. would be needed for the outcome of the war and really planned it out. Instead, they focused on the domestic political situation.” It was about how many which state was willing to give and how much old equipment was available. “The Biden administration hasn’t really left any avenues open for the Ukrainians to put the Russians under enough pressure that Russia might be interested in serious negotiations.” The need was underestimated. Without appropriate help, there could be no Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2025.
Ukraine, for its part, wanted to put “unconventional pressure” on the Russians: with strikes against the Russian arms industry and oil and gas production. “But for this they also need permission to strike on Russian territory with Western weapons.” It is important that Ukrainian drones can fly through the belt of anti-aircraft positions located around Ukraine. According to Gressel, the fact that the USA and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz do not allow Ukraine to do this is “completely irrational”. Because: “That would be a way for the Ukrainians to put pressure on the Russians, which would save the Ukrainians a lot of blood.”
“Planning” for the end of the war
Furthermore, according to the military expert, Ukraine would need “security guarantees” in order to “come to an end in any meaningful way.” The Ukrainians must certainly know that the moment the war ends, Russia cannot continue. “The only security guarantees that the Russians understand is joining NATO.”
The West would have to “plan” the end of the war and also take certain security margins into account, says Gressel. Then it has to be clarified “who makes the stuff and who pays for it”. So far everything has been a “voluntary fundraising campaign”. And “the costs have become enormous because we failed to provide Ukraine with effective support early on and repeatedly delayed aid. The longer we wait, the higher the costs will be to reconstruct the Ukrainian army later. ”
Things are “only getting worse” under Trump
Under the new US President Donald Trump, Gressel fears that “things will only get worse.” Ukraine is just a “sideshow” for Trump. The military expert also expects that there could be a dispute within Trump’s Republicans over future Ukraine policy. This would lead to a slowdown in US arms deliveries. “In the end, Ukraine doesn’t care who argues. The problem is that if the Americans are blocked because they argue, then it costs Ukraine human lives every day.” According to UN figures, there were at least 12,162 civilian deaths by the end of October.
In the current war of attrition there are similar problems on both sides, only the Ukrainians are doing “gradually worse.” The “cumulative erosion effects” are “now becoming more pronounced” on the Ukrainian side, says Gressel: Ukraine lost a lot of soldiers, especially experienced armed forces, in the spring when the required artillery ammunition from the West did not arrive. Ukraine suffers from personnel and material problems. It receives only “a fraction” of the promised arms deliveries from the West. She often receives them too late and sometimes “not synchronized with the fighting”, i.e. not what she needs at the moment. Russia is also suffering from a lack of transport vehicles and high personnel losses, which can be seen, for example, in the hiring of North Korean soldiers. But Russia has the advantage of being able to operate well in the air.
More war if Russia wins
The expert does not believe that Russia will detonate its nuclear weapons. The Kremlin’s willingness to use nuclear weapons is “constantly overestimated,” he says. Gressel, on the other hand, considers the West’s indecision to be the greater danger because it gives other states the incentive to acquire nuclear weapons. They saw that a non-nuclear power would not be protected. “The danger of nuclear proliferation is much higher than the danger of the use of nuclear weapons; Biden and Scholz are of course to blame for that.”
“If the Russians win this war, we have a near certainty that we will have another war in and around Europe that will be larger in area than the one we are seeing now,” says Gressel. There are several factors for this: The Americans are withdrawing further and further from Europe due to the problems in the Indo-Pacific. The Russians, for their part, learned with this war “that the Europeans don’t bite, only the Americans.” In addition, a victorious army tends to “overestimate oneself”: “You then have more confidence in yourself and misjudgments lead to quick attacks.” Fourthly, many Russians would have an interest in continuing the war policy: those who are involved in the “genocide” in Ukraine as a “life insurance not to go to jail” and those who are resettled there, those who are following this policy property and their status. “We would have a radicalized, militaristic Russia that believes it has the chance to become the dominant power in Europe and can assert this power militarily. This all smells very strongly of war,” warns Gressel.
North Korea is boosting drone production
According to state media, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the mass production of so-called kamikaze drones. As the state news agency KCNA reported, Kim emphasized “the need to establish a system for the serial production of drones as soon as possible and to move to full-scale mass production.”
Kamikaze drones are unmanned flying objects that are equipped with explosives and can specifically strike enemy targets. Kim had previously attended a test of such drones, which can hit targets both on land and in the sea.
North Korea introduced its own kamikaze drones for the first time in August. Experts say Pyongyang may have gained this capability as a result of its deepening alliance with Russia.