The dangerous fiction that the US and Europe can keep the war in Ukraine going is belayed by the realities of armaments capacity argues Chris Bambery

On Monday, Donald Trump announced that he is giving Russia a new, much shorter deadline, ten to twelve days, to end the war in Ukraine. Trump warned that if President Vladimir Putin does not reach a deal by around 7-9 August, the US will impose new sanctions and ‘severe tariffs’ on Russia and on countries it trades with. That would include China, India and Brazil.

Somehow, I don’t think Putin will be shaking in his boots over these threats. The Russian president’s press secretary noted that Trump’s statement was ‘taken into account’. In other words ‘keep calm and carry on’.

The reality on the ground is that Russia is winning this relentless war of attrition as it continues and being set to take more territory in the coming weeks. Russian troops are pushing north in Zaporizhia, moving south through Sumy and Kharkiv, and advancing to the west, having already taken territory in Dnipropetrovsk.

If you are winning a war you do not ask for a ceasefire. Trump’s words are going to do nothing to alter this reality.

His new policy whereby Nato countries such as Britain, France and Germany buy US weapons and them hand them over to Ukraine is not going to cause too much concern in the Kremlin for the simple reason that the USA has not got that much material to sell. The Guardian reported on 8 July: ‘The United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months … The stockpile of the Patriot missiles has fallen so low that it raised concern inside the Pentagon that it could jeopardize potential US military operations.’

The report further states: ‘… Russia last week launched its largest aerial offensive to date and Ukraine has limited options to acquire both precision-guided and more basic weapons to hold off increasingly intense Russian attacks.

Ukraine is also largely unable to directly buy weapons from defense contractors for its purposes, since a new order is estimated to take years to fulfill, and it would only be completed after the Pentagon had its own orders completed since the defense department is a higher priority customer.’

Depletion of military resources

Responsible Statecraft points out: ‘We also know that between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, some 740 Patriot PAC-2/PAC-3 missiles per year will be made in 2025, with production theoretically ramping up to roughly 1,100 missiles by 2027. That sounds like a lot, but since February 22, 2022, Ukraine has faced attacks from thousands of drones and missiles.’

The article highlights other shortages: ‘… we only have some 400 SM-3 class missiles, the defense system most capable of destroying powerful ballistic missiles before they can threaten population centers or military targets.

‘And in April of this year, two of our Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers used four to seven of these scarce SM-3 missiles to attempt the interception of ballistic missiles fired by Iran. Each of the SM-3s, depending on the model, costs between $13 and $28 million. Hence, that one engagement cost U.S. taxpayers in the neighborhood of $52M to $196M.’

In the attritional war Russia and Ukraine are fighting, artillery plays a crucial part. However, the US and its European allies cannot supply Ukraine with the necessary artillery shells: ‘Indeed, Russia is outproducing all of NATO and the U.S in terms of ammunition, rockets, and tanks, despite having a 2023 defense budget of just $100 billion and a GDP of $2 trillion. Compare this to the combined US/NATO defense budget of $1.47 trillion and a combined GDP of about $45 trillion.’

Worse than that for the US: ‘Going into 2022 there was little doubt that the U.S. Army no longer believed artillery to be as central to the battlefield as it once was. Demonstrating this mindset, on May 21, 2021, just about eight months before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Army requested permission to cut back annual spending on its 155mm rounds by half, reducing annual production to 75,357 rounds per year, about 6,200 per month.’

‘But the story doesn’t end there. It turns out that the Army had presided over the decline of the entire U.S. artillery ammunition supply chain. Just how severe the decline is revealed in an excellent investigative piece by Reuters in which we learn that for years, U.S. production of 155mm rounds had been crippled by manufacturing defects and safety issues.’

The US still has a state-owned armament industry but the Europeans, including the UK, don’t. They rely on private arms companies who cannot produce to meet Ukraine’s demands.

Ukraine’s exhaustion

Added to this is Ukraine’s growing shortage of troops: ‘Though Ukraine has more than 1 million people in uniform, including the National Guard and other units, it badly needs more. There have been questions about how Kyiv is managing the war, from a flawed mobilization drive to the overstretching and hollowing-out of front-line units through soldiers going AWOL.’

Another report shows how Kyiv is turning to the young, the old and women to fill its depleted ranks: ‘President Volodymyr Zelensky is wiping through troops so rapidly that he is encouraging men and women over 60 years of age to enlist in the military. Previously prohibited, Zelensky signed the measure into law under the premise of martial law.

‘The new law encourages people over 60 to sign up for one-year military contracts if they are cleared to serve. There is now no maximum age of service. The Ukrainian military will place seniors under a two-month probationary period to see if they are fit to fight. I fear where they would place these individuals on the battlefield.

‘Last April, Zelensky also lowered the draft age from 27 to 25. Casualties outnumbered estimates, and in February 2025, Zelensky implemented one-year military contracts for teens and young adults aged 18 to 24 on a voluntary basis. The youngest and oldest among the population are encouraged to fight voluntarily, for now—again, where have we seen this before in modern history?’

Trump seemed to believe that he could cajole Putin into agreeing to a ceasefire, but this is not a Miami property deal. Putin has repeatedly made clear that Russia requires an overall treaty with the US and Nato to secure the country’s security.

The draft treaty

If Trump does not know what Putin’s terms are for ending the war then, perhaps, he should read the draft treaty that Vladimir Putin presented to Joe Biden in December 2021. Here’s a summary;

No Further Nato Expansion

• The US would commit to preventing further enlargement of Nato, specifically barring Ukraine and other former Soviet republics from joining the alliance.
• This also included a ban on Nato military activity in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

No Deployment of US Forces or weapons in certain countries

• The treaty would forbid the US from deploying military forces or weaponry in countries that joined Nato after May 1997 (such as Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, and others).
• Nato infrastructure would have to be rolled back to pre-1997 locations.

Ban on intermediate-range missiles

• Both Russia and the US would be prohibited from deploying ground-launched intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles outside their national territories, as well as in areas of their own territory where such missiles could strike the other’s territory.

Limit military manoeuvres and activities

• Limits on heavy bombers and surface warship deployments: Both sides would restrict the operation of heavy bombers and warships in areas from which they could strike targets on the other’s territory.

Nuclear weapons restrictions

• All nuclear weapons would be confined to each country’s own national territory. Neither side could deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders. (Note: the US just sent a batch of nukes to England.)
• Withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons from Europe and elimination of existing infrastructure for their deployment abroad.

Mutual security pledge

• Each side would agree not to take any security measures that could undermine the core security interests of the other party.

Establishment of consultation mechanisms

• Proposals included the renewal or strengthening of direct consultation mechanisms, such as the Nato–Russia Council and the establishment of a crisis hotline.

Indivisibility of security principle

• Included a reaffirmation that the security of one state cannot come at the expense of the security of another, formalising Russia’s interpretation of the ‘indivisible security’ concept.

The response of Biden’s US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was effectively to tell the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, to ‘get stuffed’.

Having failed to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire, Trump now seems to be following in Biden’s footsteps in regard to this war, despite promises to his Maga base that he would wrap it up quickly and use the money saved to boost the US economy.

The threat of further sanctions seems bombast too on Trump’s part. Russia has, since the start of the war, decoupled its economy from the West, pivoting towards China and other countries in the Brics alliance.

Dangerous delusions

The US government reports on the collapse of Russo-American trade: ‘U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Russia was $2.5 billion in 2024, a 37.5 percent decrease ($1.5 billion) over 2023.’ The threat of secondary sanctions on countries trading with Iran will only further alienate growing and important economies from Washington; not least China, which will only benefit.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, a criminal act but one provoked by the US and Nato, the Western media has been predicting the military and/or economic collapse of Russia. In February, a US official told distinguished US journalist, Seymour Hersh, that: ‘The monthly casualties have been 380 a month through May. The total now is two million. Most importantly was how this number was described. All the best trained regular Army troops, to be replaced by ignorant peasants. All the best mid-grade officers and NCOs dead. All modern armour and fighting vehicles. Junk. This is unsustainable.’

Former CIA intelligence analyst and fierce critic of US ‘forever wars’, Larry C. Johnson, responded by saying: ‘Really? Two million since February 2022? The numbers don’t add up. If that was true, Russia has lost an average of 48,780 soldiers KIA [Killed in Action] or WIA [Wounded in Action] per month. Let me show you why that is a garbage number.’

Johnson then rigorously goes through the statistics and concludes: ‘I estimate there are 480,000 WIA. Total casualties according to these figures is 600,000. That leaves us with 500,520 unaccounted for. How many deserted? How many simply ended their tour of duty and went home?

‘If the number cited by Sy Hersh’s source was valid, then Russia would have had to conscript or recruit an additional 899,500 new soldiers. Neither Western sources or Russian sources confirm that happened.

‘I can’t say I am shocked by this because we saw the US military fudge the casualties of the Vietnamese during that war, and the CIA inflated the number of Soviet deaths in Afghanistan.’

Meanwhile, more and more Ukrainians and Russians are dying or being maimed on the battlefield. Trump and his European satraps refuse to recognise reality and sit down with both sides to conclude an agreement to end the war and to restore relations between Russia and the West.

Meanwhile lunacy continues at the highest levels. Earlier in July this year, General Christopher Donahue, commander of US Army Europe and Africa, gave a speech to the Association of the US Army’s inaugural LandEuro conference in Wiesbaden, Germany last week. He told his audience about Nato advances in rapid land-based operations and emphasised that Kaliningrad, a heavily militarised Russian enclave surrounded by Nato territory, could be neutralised from the ground much more swiftly than previously possible. He said: ‘We can take that down from the ground in a time frame that is unheard of – faster than we’ve ever been able to do.’ 

A land invasion of Kaliningrad, a crucial port on the Baltic Sea, would be a trigger for a nuclear war; but that doesn’t get in General Donahue’s way.

Nor does it seem to get in Trump’s way. Former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, went on X in response to Trump’s announcement of new sanctions saying: ‘Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10,’ Medvedev wrote. ‘He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.’  He added: ‘Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!’, referring to the former US president Joe Biden.

Donald Trump reacted to Medvedev’s statement on X, announcing: ‘I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.’

That’s not the end of this nuclear posturing. During the 1990s and the first decade of this century, the US closed or reduced the number of its air bases in Europe. Nuclear weapons were, for example, withdrawn from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk in 2008, after fifty years of being based there. Now, in a major reversal, the United States has deployed the B61-12 gravity bombs to six bases Europe, including Lakenheath. Three are in Turkey facing Russia across the Black Sea.
 
Russia is well aware these nuclear weapons are being deployed for possible use against it. Trump’s making very dangerous threats, raising the likelihood of a nuclear exchange. Washington seems intent on playing nuclear Russian roulette, despite the potential consequences.