Ukraine can’t win. The U.S. should end all aid to force peace

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(This is my Sunday column in the Orange County Register)Subscribe to the Orange County Register online for $1 for 6 months here.)

Here’s why the United States should stop supporting Ukraine, ending all military and intelligence aid: So many Ukrainian men have been killed, the country’s only chance of survival is an immediate ceasefire and a quick end to the fighting.

Yuriy Lutsenko, a former Ukrainian prosecutor general and interior minister, estimated casualties, not deaths, in January 2024 on Telekanal Pryamyy, a pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian YouTube channel: “We must honestly say that the 500,000 that are now being talked about if divided into months, is 30,000 a month, and then we will approximately understand what is happening at the front.”

More recently, the pro-Ukraine London Times reported on March 8, “With three times more deaths than births, Ukraine has the highest mortality rate in the world and one of the lowest birth rates, a demographic crisis for which there is no swift remedy.”

The slaughter happens because Russia has air superiority, hypersonic missiles that can’t be stopped, a much larger population, multiples more artillery and 3,000-pound glide bombs it can drop on Ukrainian positions. You can’t win a war with Ukraine’s situation: close to no air power and inadequate ammunition because your U.S. and European suppliers don’t have enough.

CNN reported last September, before Donald Trump’s reelection, that supply shortages were a problem for crucial 155 millimeter ammunition and Patriot antimissile systems, which have been sent in large quantities to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. And replenishment “is a yearslong process that won’t quickly meet the surging demand.”

For those arguing for continued U.S. aid, here’s the question: What is your victory strategy? Trump has agreed with Ukraine to continue military aid and intelligence in return for a 30-day ceasefire. That was Joe Biden’s strategy for three years that only produced the immense casualties enumerated above.

Then there’s the other party to a ceasefire: Russia. Putin has agreed. But the Financial Times headlined, “Vladimir Putin sets tough conditions for Ukraine ceasefire: Russian president indicates Moscow is unwilling to drop maximalist demands.”

Russia’s demands include the following conditions on Ukraine: that it recognizes Russia’s annexation of the four oblasts in eastern Ukraine, and of the Crimean peninsula; removes its military from those areas; agrees never to join NATO; ends the influence in the government of what the Russians call the Nazi followers of Stepan Bandera; and holds new elections.

Meanwhile, Russian forces are clearing the Kursk area of their country occupied beginning last August by elite Ukrainian troops. Now almost all those troops are dead or captured. And Russia’s forces for that task will be freed to push further westward into Ukraine.

Again, if you disagree, what is your plan to stop the Russian forces? The only way Russia can be stopped from driving all the way to Lvov is for direct NATO involvement, beginning with the U.S. Air Force declaring a “no fly zone” over Ukraine — leading to nuclear war.

According to Britannica, since World War II, one of the criteria for a just war has been “there must be a reasonable chance of success.” Ukraine has no chance of success militarily. The war’s slaughter has been so immense, it can only survive, albeit in truncated form, if its men stop fighting instead of dying.

I’m hoping Trump is using his “Art of the Deal” strategies to work out some kind of real ceasefire, not the unreal one arranged with Ukrainian officials in Riyadh. He is eager not just to end the war, but to enter into crucial negotiations — neglected by Biden for four years — on nuclear arms limitation, the Middle East and the Arctic.

Crucially, the New Start Treaty, which limits each side to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, expires next February. The last thing we need is another nuclear arms race.

John Seiler is on the Southern California News Group editorial board and was a Russian linguist in the U.S. Army.