{"id":16196,"date":"2025-03-30T18:14:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T01:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16196"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:08:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T07:08:32","slug":"issue-of-the-week-war-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16196","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Soldiers<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Partnership:<\/strong> The Secret History of the War in Ukraine<\/em>, The New York Times, March 30, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lead article in today’s Sunday New York Times dominated the front page. It is an astounding, detailed, behind the scenes report on the partnership between the United States and Ukraine since the Russians invaded in February 2022. In some ways it’s the kind of account historically seen in books long after a conflct has ended, showing the high stakes, sensitive, difficult relationships even between allies. The stakes in what has been in effect a global struggle between democracy and autocracy, the greatest challenge to the international rules based order and largest war in Europe since World War Two, threatening wider war including the possible use of nuclear weapons, could not be higher. After three years the new Trump administration has turned everything upside down in ways heretofore unimaginable, very possibly threatening the likelehood of wider war, including nuclear war, even more so, in the short term or long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve written about this subject for years, reported from Europe on the ground, and produced documentary and PSA projects on refugee support in particular as well as other horrors of the war and global increases in hunger as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particular report from the Times is a unique informative inside look at the real time events in the US\/Ukranian relationship in fighting against the Russian aggression, the challenges involved and the momentous stakes at this point in policy decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Partnership:<\/strong>The Secret History of the War in Ukraine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

This is the untold story of America\u2019s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia\u2019s invading armies.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early days after Russia\u2019s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Adam Entous, March 30, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON A SPRING MORNING<\/strong> two months after Vladimir Putin\u2019s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaving the city, the convoy \u2014 manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed \u2014 traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzesz\u00f3w-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison\u2019s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind the story with Adam Entous<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today that order \u2014 along with Ukraine\u2019s defense of its land \u2014 teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees \u2014 a peace with no certainty of continued peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today\u2019s precarious place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine \u2014 including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden\u2019s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv\u2019s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. \u201cThey are part of the kill chain now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The partnership\u2019s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats \u2014 to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war \u2014 enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence \u2014 that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Men<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia\u2019s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine\u2019s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ultimately the partnership strained \u2014 and the arc of the war shifted \u2014 amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling \u2014 the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn\u2019t understand why the Ukrainians didn\u2019t simply accept good advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn\u2019t lose it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn\u2019t, or wouldn\u2019t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians\u2019 unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war \u2014 in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year\u2019s successes \u2014 the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear \u2014 that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them \u2014 some said too slowly \u2014 to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars \u2014 Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn\u2019t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, \u201cThere\u2019s nobody there \u2014 go,\u201d order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answers to those questions \u2014 in truth, the partnership\u2019s entire trajectory \u2014 would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we\u2019re done,\u201d General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. \u201cI feel the exact same way,\u201d the Ukrainian replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part 1February\u2013May 2022<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Building Trust \u2014 and a Killing Machine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reclaimed by Ukraine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian advances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held by Russia since 2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IN MID-APRIL 2022<\/strong>, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, \u201cThe Americans go: \u2018Oh, that\u2019s the Moskva!\u2019 The Ukrainians go: \u2018Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Moskva was the flagship of Russia\u2019s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Note on Sourcing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sinking was a signal triumph \u2014 a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn\u2019t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn\u2019t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. \u201cBlankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,\u201d Ukraine\u2019s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in the portentous days before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, \u201cWe told them, \u2018The Russians are coming \u2014 see ya.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting the Russians. You\u2019re not. Why should we listen to you?\u201d Ukraine\u2019s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine\u2019s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny\u2019s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians\u2019 equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American\u2019s calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine\u2019s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, \u201cI know you\u2019re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south \u2014 a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons \u2014 M777 artillery batteries and shells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely \u2014 the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Polish general became General Donahue\u2019s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. \u201cThese are your guys right here,\u201d General Milley told them, adding: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to work with them. They\u2019re going to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, \u201cwe organized the composition of a delegation\u201d to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. \u201cAnd so it began.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

AT THE HEART OF THE PARTNERSHIP <\/strong>were two generals \u2014 the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden\u2019s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth \u2014 the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart\u2019s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan\u2019s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: \u201cMy mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to \u201ca comic book action hero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Soldiers<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their \u201cGlory to Ukraine\u201d battle cry, he laid down the challenge: \u201cYou can \u2018Slava Ukraini\u2019 all you want with other people. I don\u2019t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.\u201d He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first stage was underway \u2014 training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,\u201d he recalled. But \u201csomebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, \u2018We have found our partner.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

SOON THE UKRAINIANS<\/strong>, nearly 20 in all \u2014 intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists \u2014 began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets\u2019 locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets \u201ctargets\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some officers thought \u201ctargets\u201d was appropriate. Others called them \u201cintel tippers,\u201d because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command\u2019s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be \u201cpoints of interest.\u201d Intelligence on airborne threats would be \u201ctracks of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you ever get asked the question, \u2018Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?\u2019 you can legitimately not be lying when you say, \u2018No, I did not,\u2019\u201d one U.S. official explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. \u201cOur message to the Russians was, \u2018This war should be fought inside Ukraine,\u2019\u201d a senior U.S. official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Men<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of \u201cstrategic\u201d Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. \u201cImagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,\u201d another senior U.S. official said. \u201cLike, we\u2019d go to war.\u201d Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn\u2019t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the Ukrainians where<\/em> Russians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not say how<\/em> it knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets \u2014 Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: \u201cDon\u2019t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you\u2019ll like the results, and if you don\u2019t like the results, tell us, we\u2019ll make it better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE SYSTEM<\/strong> WENT LIVE<\/strong> in May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians\u2019 M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine\u2019s east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark\u2019s coordinates in preparation for the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: \u201cYou feel good?\u201d he asked. \u201cI feel real good,\u201d the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. \u201cEverybody went, \u2018We can do this!\u2019\u201d a U.S. official recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it \u201ca hell of a target.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine\u2019s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones \u2014 which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know when we started to believe?\u201d General Zabrodskyi recalled. \u201cWhen Donahue said, \u2018This is a list of positions.\u2019 We checked the list and we said, \u2018These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.\u2019 And they sent the other 50.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE M777S BECAME WORKHORSES<\/strong> of the Ukrainian army. <\/strong>But because they <\/strong>generally couldn\u2019t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians\u2019 vast superiority in manpower and equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap \u2014 providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ensuing debate reflected the Americans\u2019 evolving thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army\u2019s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, \u201cMilley would always say, \u2018You\u2019ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they\u2019re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.\u2019\u201d General Cavoli\u2019s argument, she said, was that \u201cwith HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that\u2019s how they will start to beat the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like \u201cstanding on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?\u201d And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming \u201cthe entire back office of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians\u2019 target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,\u201d General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: \u201cMost states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together the partners were honing a killing machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part 2 June\u2013November 2022<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2018When You Defeat Russia, We Will Make You Blue for Good\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reclaimed by Ukraine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian advances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held by Russia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AT THEIR FIRST MEETING<\/strong>, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. \u201cWhy are we green?\u201d General Zabrodskyi asked. \u201cWe should be blue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine\u2019s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue \u2014 a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. \u201cWhen you defeat Russia,\u201d General Donahue told the Ukrainians, \u201cwe will make you blue for good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russians\u2019 strategy had morphed from decapitation \u2014 the futile assault on Kyiv \u2014 to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option \u2014 from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition\u2019s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro\u2019s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, \u201cIf you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THAT WAS THE PLAN<\/strong> until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kherson would come faster \u2014 and first, on Aug. 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute \u2014 a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upshot wasn\u2019t what anyone had planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated \u2014 reach the Oskil river valley. \u201cGo, go, go \u2014 you have them on the ropes,\u201d General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil\u2019s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky\u2019s standing with the president soared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro\u2019s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American\u2019s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That didn\u2019t work either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe would have already been fired,\u201d General Donahue responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got this,\u201d Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

PERHAPS NO PIECE<\/strong> of Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the \u201ccore tension\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing \u201csomething desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia\u2019s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea\u2019s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia\u2019s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia\u2019s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk\u2019s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro\u2019s west bank and seize its equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Washington, Mr. Biden\u2019s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite \u2014 if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moment might have been the Ukrainians\u2019 best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective \u2014 the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles \u2014 time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Soldiers<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro\u2019s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a \u201ccombat souvenir\u201d: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 \u2014 a place called Bakhmut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Soldiers<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part 3 November 2022\u2013November 2023<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Best-Laid Plans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reclaimed by Ukraine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian advances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held by Russia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE PLANNING<\/strong> for 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war\u2019s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to win this whole thing,\u201d Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea \u2014 what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine\u2019s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians\u2019 halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. \u201cThey\u2019re digging in, guys,\u201d he told them. \u201cHow are you going to get across this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn\u2019t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, \u201cDonahue is right.\u201d But he would also admit that \u201cnobody liked Donahue\u2019s recommendations, except me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 18th Airborne\u2019s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus \u2014 the Greek mythological personification of darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield \u2014 the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzesz\u00f3w-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv \u2014 for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And beneath the stars, \u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked him, \u2018Why are you thanking me?\u2019\u201d General Zabrodskyi recalled. \u201c\u2018I should say thank you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. \u201cThanks to you,\u201d he said, \u201cwe built all these things that we never could have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE <\/strong>\u201cNEW GUY<\/strong> IN THE ROOM<\/strong>\u201d was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to get them ready for the fight,\u201d Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians\u2019 trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An opportunity soon presented itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. \u201cTrust us on this,\u201d General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, \u201cWe did the full targeting process absolutely independently.\u201d Wiesbaden\u2019s role would be limited to providing coordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aerial<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence \u2014 if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don\u2019t do anything crazy,\u201d General Aguto told the Ukrainians. \u201cThe whole goal,\u201d he added, \u201cis to have you operate on your own at some point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

ECHOING 2022<\/strong>, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky\u2019s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut \u2014 where combat had been smoldering for months \u2014 with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south \u2014 the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine\u2019s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky\u2019s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him \u201cthat Russian general.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, \u201cI don\u2019t agree, but I have my orders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades \u2014 each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers \u2014 for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The general had other plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. \u201cTake all new guys\u201d for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old \u2014 mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, \u201cAll we kept thinking was, This is not great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to \u201cget your 18-year-olds in the game.\u201d But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS\u2019 reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems \u2014 missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles \u2014 to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia\u2019s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS<\/strong> had been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto\u2019s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn\u2019t commit until they had it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: \u201cMisha, I love your country. But if you don\u2019t do this, you\u2019re going to lose the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy answer was: \u2018I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I\u2019m not the supreme commander. And I\u2019m not the president of Ukraine,\u2019\u201d General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, \u201cProbably I needed to cry as much as he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: \u201cTell me the truth. Did you change the plan?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, no, no,\u201d he responded. \u201cWe did not change the plan, and we are not going to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

IN LATE MAY<\/strong>, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn\u2019t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans were not told the meeting\u2019s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the plan!\u201d General Cavoli cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition\u2019s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,\u201d one Ukrainian official remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should have walked away,\u201d said a senior American official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they would not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,\u201d a senior Biden administration official explained. \u201cAll we could do was give them advice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE LEADER OF THE MARIUPOL ASSAULT, <\/strong>General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto\u2019s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive\u2019s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol\u2019s forces, using Wiesbaden\u2019s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto\u2019s office: General Syrsky\u2019s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn\u2019t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin\u2019s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren\u2019t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. \u201cI was right, Aguto. You were wrong,\u201d an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, \u201cWe\u2019re going to get to Luhansk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the \u201cfortress of our morale.\u201d In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians\u2019 predicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians\u2019 casualties \u2014 in the tens of thousands \u2014 far outstripped the Ukrainians\u2019. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which left Melitopol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed \u2014 shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake the ground now,\u201d General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers \u2014 to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn\u2019t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians\u2019 coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. \u201cThe situation was changed completely,\u201d General Zabrodskyi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren\u2019t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. \u201cA damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,\u201d one officer remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE UKRAINIANS<\/strong> would not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi\u2019s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn\u2019t advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans\u2019 last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail \u2014 trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, \u201cWe do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country\u2019s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been \u201cprimarily blunted\u201d by the allies\u2019 \u201cpolitical hesitation\u201d and \u201cconstant\u201d delays in weapons deliveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to another senior Ukrainian official, \u201cThe real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive\u2019s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. \u201cThe important relationships were maintained,\u201d said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. \u201cBut it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Military<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part 4December 2023\u2013January 2025<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Breaches of Trust, and of Borders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ukrainian advances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reclaimed by Ukraine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian advances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held by Russia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS<\/strong>, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle \u2014 twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court \u2014 as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 \u2014 the officers working below burst into applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn\u2019t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine\u2019s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, \u201cFrom where?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. \u201cHe was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,\u201d said one of his aides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory \u2014 a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden\u2019s contribution was intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn\u2019t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: \u201cOK, there\u2019s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn\u2019t just about striking things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, \u201cWe knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

GENERAL ZABRODSKYI<\/strong> was in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general\u2019s subsequent decision to publish a piece in The Economist<\/a> declaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a \u201cdead man walking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Syrsky\u2019s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president\u2019s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Syrsky was also a known commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut \u2014 the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. \u201cMaybe in my next life,\u201d General Zabrodskyi replied.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need this right now,\u201d General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE RED LINES<\/strong> kept moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn\u2019t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as \u201csubject matter experts.\u201d Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country\u2019s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn\u2019t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What\u2019s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea \u2014 providing points of interest and precision coordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an \u201cops box\u201d \u2014 a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs \u2014 crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins \u2014 that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options \u2014 one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals\u2019 recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option \u2014 but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country\u2019s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden\u2019s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians\u2019 own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

SUMMER 2024<\/strong>: Ukraine\u2019s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, \u201cI need a win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the Ukrainians, though, \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u201d was \u201cbetter than ask and stop,\u201d explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: \u201cWe are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto\u2019s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move \u2014 sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Americans, the incursion\u2019s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn\u2019t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,\u201d a senior Pentagon official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, \u201ccould lead to a catastrophe\u201d: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation\u2019s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage \u2014 to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

PROVOCATIVE OPERATIONS<\/strong> once forbidden were now permitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue\u2019s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles\u2019 flight paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea\u2019s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president\u2019s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president\u2019s obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn\u2019t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden\u2019s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some \u201cpotholes,\u201d which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, \u201cSometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request \u201cvariances,\u201d carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot\u2019s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets \u2014 the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,\u201d Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. \u201cYou\u2019re wrong. We know the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

MR. AUSTIN AND GENERAL CAVOLI<\/strong> traveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk \u2014 their \u201cbig target,\u201d one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians\u2019 casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn\u2019t do for Ukraine in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn\u2019t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, \u201cWhy would I draft more people? We don\u2019t have any equipment to give them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,\u201d the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. \u201cThey don\u2019t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the perennial standoff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Ukrainians\u2019 view, the Americans weren\u2019t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Americans\u2019 view, the Ukrainians weren\u2019t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To one American official, though, it\u2019s \u201cnot an existential war if they won\u2019t make their people fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

GENERAL BALDWIN<\/strong>, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners\u2019 commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: \u201cWhat will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, \u201cI had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn\u2019t know anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He crossed his final red line \u2014 expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia \u2014 after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Men<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war\u2019s first year, with Wiesbaden\u2019s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of General Donahue\u2019s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine \u2014 to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin\u2019s counterparts hailed him as the \u201cgodfather\u201d and \u201carchitect\u201d of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians\u2019 defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,\u201d he said, blinking back tears. And then added: \u201cI wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources and methodology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute\u2019s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA\u2019s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to News The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine, The New York Times, March 30, 2025 The lead article in today’s Sunday New York Times dominated the front page. It is an astounding, detailed, behind the scenes report on the partnership between the United States and Ukraine since the Russians invaded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,54],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16196"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17256,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16196\/revisions\/17256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}