Ukraine‘s defensive war against Russia is important for America. Were he able to conquer and absorb Ukraine into his ideal of a greater Russian superstate, Vladimir Putin would strike a great blow against the post-1945 understanding that underpins the democratic rule of law. As he contemplates his own war of conquest against Taiwan, Chinese leader Xi Jinping must see that the United States retains its traditional world leadership role and will not allow Putin’s aggression to triumph.
Still, the foreign policy interests of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and those of the U.S. do not entirely intersect. As Ukraine continues to make very welcome progress toward the dislocation of Russian forces from its territory, the Biden administration and Congress must make clear to Zelensky that he cannot expect a perpetual blank check.
That imperative was underlined last week with the revelation that the U.S. believes Ukraine was behind the assassination of a Russian civilian in Moscow. As the New York Times reports, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that the Ukrainian government was responsible for the Aug. 22 killing of Darya Dugina. The daughter of a prominent Russian ultranationalist writer, Dugina died after an explosive device under her car was detonated.
There is an excellent argument in favor of Ukraine’s aggressive counteroffensives. There is a very good argument in favor of Ukraine’s targeting of Russian military depots inside Russia. An admittedly tenuous argument might even be made that Dugina’s father, Aleksandr Dugin, is a legitimate Ukrainian target. Dugin, after all, mobilized Russian popular opinion in favor of a war of annihilation against Ukrainian sovereignty.
But there is no justification for Dugina’s killing. She may have agitated in favor of her father’s views, but Dugina was a civilian. Her death does no service to Ukraine’s defensive war objectives. Instead, if in a more discriminating fashion, it replicates Russia’s raining of destruction upon innocent Ukrainians.
Of relevance to U.S. interests, the visceral and public-facing nature of Dugina’s assassination risks provoking Russian escalation against Ukraine or the West. Putin may feel obliged to respond in a public fashion, if only to sate a popular Russian appetite for retaliation. The average Russian can now look at Dugina’s killing and think: “Ah, so the Americans are supplying Ukraine with arms, and now Ukraine is blowing up our capital city.” It does not matter that the bomb used to kill Dugina was likely not supplied by the U.S. It only matters that it can now credibly be perceived by Russians that way. And again, Ukraine has no excuse in saying that Russia is deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians. Two terrorist wrongs don’t make a moral right.
It would be a serious mistake for the Biden administration to dance to Putin’s nuclear escalation waltz. If Putin wants to dangle nuclear detonations, let him. As proven by nearly 50 years of Cold War brinkmanship, the appropriate response to unjustified Russian threats is for the U.S. to make clear that its own nuclear deterrence remains ready and superior. The Russians are not ISIS. As in the Cold War, the Russians have neither a death wish nor a wish for further global alienation and associated economic hardship. Putin will thus know that his order to use a nuclear weapon is just as likely to end up with his generals shooting him as delivering a mushroom cloud over Ukraine. That said, the Biden administration should not allow Ukraine to draw the U.S. into an association, however indirect, with terrorism against the Russian state. Such actions do not serve American interests nor comport with the American way of war. Indeed, they threaten U.S. national security.
In turn, Biden should remind Zelensky that America’s overwhelming support for his government and people comes with some basic expectations. One is that Ukraine cease plotting any actions, such as Dugina’s assassination, that undermine allies’ trust while offering no military or strategic benefit. Another is that Ukraine keep the CIA station in Kyiv fully apprised of any plot that might risk dramatic escalation with Russia. The third is that, while Zelensky has every right to rule out talks with Russia until Putin has left power, America’s policy in Ukraine isn’t static. If Russia was prepared, for example, to withdraw its forces from the Ukrainian mainland and cease military operations, but Zelensky refused to negotiate with Putin, the U.S. would have no obligation to continue its scaled-up support.
The U.S. objective is Ukraine’s assurance of democratic sovereignty and territorial integrity — not necessarily whatever Zelensky feels like doing in any one moment. Seeing as America’s military and financial support to Ukraine far surpasses that of any other nation, Zelensky is likely to listen.
The top line is quite simple. America has a significant national security interest in Ukraine’s defeat of this egregious Russian invasion. Generous American support, both financial and military, should continue flowing to Kyiv in that pursuit (though Biden should hammer the Western Europeans for doing so little). But Zelensky should not imagine an American blank check. The U.S. signed up for the liberation of Kherson and Kharkiv. It did not sign up to be associated with car bombs and civilian killings in Moscow.
