Last October, a weeklong barrage of Russian missiles and kamikaze drones destroyed nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations, plunging millions of Ukrainians into darkness ahead of winter and signaling a significant Russian tactical shift to target civilian infrastructure.
Back in Washington, the attacks were a game-changer. President Joe Biden was so outraged by the threat to civilians that he directed the Pentagon to find a way to get Ukraine America’s most advanced missile defense system, the Patriot – a move his administration had previously dismissed.
That directive, described to CNN by three administration officials, jump-started an effort at the Pentagon to identify and deliver a Patriot missile battery that the US could spare. New intelligence that Iran might be preparing to sell ballistic missiles to Russia also made the issue even more urgent and, two months later, the Pentagon announced a Patriot battery would be on its way to Kyiv.
The episode was one of several critical turning points in the yearlong security assistance effort, one that has been defined by the US providing Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated, powerful and longer-range weaponry – from shoulder-fired Javelins to HIMARS rocket launchers to M-1 Abrams tanks – even when Kyiv’s requests for that same weaponry had been previously denied.
It’s a process that US officials say has been driven by the Ukrainian military’s evolving capabilities, by its needs on the battlefield and by Russia’s evolving tactics. Diplomatic considerations, including Biden’s overarching goal of maintaining unity in the allied coalition, has also been a hallmark.
Yet for all the calculations and considerations, fundamental to the White House’s posture toward Ukraine is a pledge of clearly defined consequences Biden made directly to…
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