The Cost of America’s Political Failings Is Paid for With Ukrainian Blood
DNIPRO, Ukraine — The building rocks as air defenses engage incoming missiles, and one regrets being caught out on the 17th floor of a 20-floor high-rise, despite the view and modern construction.
In Dnipro, an industrial city along the banks of the Dnieper River in central Ukraine where I had been visiting contacts, several missiles strike with sharp cracks and rumbling booms as they hit residential buildings, a shopping center, and a maternity hospital.
Russia sends cruise and ballistic missiles and attack drones against Ukrainian cities every day, often several times a day. Their targets are densely populated cities, where they often kill civilians — as they did on Tuesday, Jan. 23, in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro, when 40 missiles killed at least 18 people, including several children, and wounded 130 more.
Despite sanctions and dwindling supplies of high-tech components, Russia still possesses the capacity to produce hundreds of advanced missiles each year, even as Ukraine’s stock of interceptors runs lower and lower every day. Moscow has even begun firing missiles it received from North Korea.
As Ukraine enters one of its darkest hours, its most important ally — the United States — has gone AWOL. With Republicans using aid to Ukraine as a bargaining chip over immigration in Congress, the possibility that former president Donald Trump could return to power and make good on his promises to leave NATO has created a sense of crisis not just in Kyiv, but throughout Europe. Across the transatlantic divide, there’s rumbling that Ukraine might “lose” the war. While some of Kyiv’s more stalwart friends are trying to fill the void, the alliance supporting Ukraine is wavering. The country needs weapons, money, and support to defend itself, and to offset Russia’s advantages in economic, military, and demographic resources…
