On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported on how President Joe Biden set a trap for House Speaker Mike Johnson. When Biden called congressional leaders in for a meeting that was ostensibly about preventing a government shutdown, the president—along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—instead hit Johnson with a plan for a new assistance package for Ukraine.
Biden piled on facts and presentations, warning Johnson of the consequences of failing to send more aid. The three congressional leaders jumped in to emphasize the historic importance of preventing Russia’s profiting from an illegal, unprovoked invasion. And at the end of that meeting, Biden pulled Johnson aside for a one-on-one discussion.
What Biden said to Johnson when they were alone isn’t known. But if anyone doubts Biden’s effectiveness as a forceful negotiator, they need only look at the $95 billion package that Biden signed this week.
“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said.
And that is the real art of the deal.
Russia’s next big target is a little town that has shouldered a huge burden
Chasiv Yar lies less than 7 kilometers west of Bakhmut. The town was repeatedly struck by Russian missiles early in the war when Russian forces were still many kilometers away. Later, after Russian forces pushed through the town of Soledar and began to engulf the area around Bakhmut, the Russian military claimed to have captured Chasiv Yar, but that wasn’t true. Instead, Chasiv Yar became critically important to the long, grinding defense of Bakhmut.
The town is situated at the end of two roads, each of which became, at one time or another, the only way in or out of the city. The whole town of Chasiv Yar became a fortified base, supplying Ukrainian troops across the area and serving as a location for Ukrainian artillery that could sweep critical highway junctions to the southeast.
More than a year after Russia first claimed to have taken the town, The New York Times reports that Chasiv Yar is Russia’s next big target. Compared to targets like Bakhmut, or even Avdiivka, the town is small, only about 13 square kilometers. It doesn’t seem like a position that should demand such attention from Russian forces that have been advancing at multiple points on the front line while Ukraine has suffered from a lack of artillery, anti-tank mines, and air defenses. The prewar population of Chasiv Yar was only around 13,000, but according to Reuters, Russia now has 25,000 troops arrayed to take what remains of the town.
The reason is simple enough: hills.
Chasiv Yar rests on a hilltop that gives it a commanding view of Bakhmut, the highways east and south, and the set of descending bluffs in the direction of Klishchivka. Those hills, and the town’s position on multiple roads, are what made Chasiv Yar so valuable to Ukraine in the 11 months since Russia captured the ruins of Bakhmut.
For a time in the spring, as Ukraine was launching its stuttering offensive, it made gains around the city of Bakhmut, and there was even talk of pushing Russia out of the area. In particular, Ukraine made gains on the south side of the city, liberating the villages of Klishchivka and Andriivka. Russia has tried to get those locations back ever since, but their assaults have repeatedly failed because Ukraine controls the high ground at those positions.
Should Russian troops capture Chasiv Yar, they’ll hold ground that’s even higher and positioned to cut off access to Ukrainian positions at the front.
With new U.S. weapons on the way, the situation at Chasiv Yar has become particularly intense. Russia knows that Ukraine’s troops are about to be resupplied. Both sides know that those supplies won’t come in an instant. So Russia is trying to advance now before Ukraine can restore its stocks. On the other hand, Ukraine is burning through supplies at an accelerated rate, trying to hold off the Russian advance while it waits for an influx of new materiel.
Fortress Chasiv Yar is right at the center of this storm. Russian losses in this advance are still tremendous, but it’s going to be a race. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russia wants to capture Chasiv Yar by May 9.
What happens here may be a strong signal of whether a renewed stream of U.S.-provided supplies is enough to halt a Russian advance that has been all too successful in recent months.
Nothing Russia has in Crimea is safe
In October, Russia withdrew much of its Black Sea Fleet from the naval base at Sevastopol after Ukraine continued to take down Russian ships using both sea and air drones. By December, most of that fleet had been completely removed from Crimea. And by the end of March, Russia had moved most of its ships to Russian ports in hopes of getting the remainder of their fleet out of range of Ukraine’s continued attacks.
But while drones—particularly Ukraine’s increasingly sophisticated fleet of unmanned surface vessels—have been very successful against Russian ships, Ukraine’s missiles have largely lacked the range to strike other locations. That includes Russian rail hubs and the Kerch Bridge, which have made Crimea a critical supply line for Russian forces in the south of occupied Ukraine.
That changed this week, as Ukraine deployed longer-range U.S.-made ATACMS tactical missiles for the first time. The first strike for these missiles was about 160 kilometers into Crimea, hitting a Russian airfield.
But these missiles have a range of at least 300 kilometers. That puts everything in Crimea, including Vladimir Putin’s beloved bridge, in range from Ukrainian positions on the north side of the Dnipro River.
Ukraine didn’t acquire these missiles as part of the package that Biden signed this week; the U.S. began shipping ATACMS to Ukraine last fall. However, until recently those shipments were restricted to shorter-range models. Then in February, the U.S. arranged to buy more of the long-range missiles, allowing it to supply ATACMS to Ukraine without drawing down America’s strategic supply.
Ukraine’s supply of long-range ATACMS isn’t large. But carefully aimed at airfields, storage locations, and transportation hubs, even a few of these missiles could make a big difference—and they can make it almost anywhere in Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Ukraine pulls Abrams tanks off the front lines
The Associated Press reports that Ukraine has withdrawn the remaining 26 U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 tanks from front-line service after five were lost to drone and artillery attacks.
Ukraine spent months pleading with Western allies for more modern battle tanks, as Russia had a huge numeric advantage in the amount of armor it could send to the front line. But by the time Ukraine finally received tanks from Europe and the U.S. and Ukrainian troops were trained to operate and maintain these systems, the situation had changed.
First-person view drones, known as FPVs and piloted by operators wearing a pair of VR goggles that allow them to see from the drone’s viewpoint, have taken over as the primary threat to armor. Not only can these drones strike a tank or other armored vehicle directly, they can give precise positions so that artillery, or other drones, can follow up on any target they identify. One look at a daily list of losses around Ukraine shows that these drones have become dominant in the destruction of armored vehicles.
With the M1 pulled from the front, the U.S. will work with Ukraine to look for ways to make the tanks less vulnerable to drone attacks.
Ukraine’s best brigades fumbled away a town, and they’re not looking good
The 47th Mechanized Brigade and 115th Mechanized Brigade have a reputation as two of Ukraine’s best. But as Forbes reported, a fumbled handoff in control of an area between these two brigades resulted in the fastest Russian advance in months.
When the 47th withdrew from the area around the front-line town of Ocheretyne, near Avdiivka, the 115th was supposed to step in and keep the defensive line intact. But according to one commander of the 47th, “certain units just fucked off.”
The 115th stumbled into position piecemeal, leaving gaps in the line that were immediately exploited by Russia’s 30th Motor Rifle Brigade. The Russians raced forward to capture much of the town. In an effort to stop the rapid penetration, Ukraine pushed forward elements of the 100th Mechanized Brigade that lacked heavy equipment. The underequipped 100th reportedly gave the Russians a hard fight but at the end of the day, Russia pushed kilometers up a railway and a road, capturing the eastern portion of Ocheretyne.
Why did something like this happen? As another report in El Pais shows, even Ukraine’s best forces are running low on equipment, ammo, and men. And there’s that other factor—the one that appears again and again in a battlefield where tactics no longer align with either the World War II-style heavy armor and artillery assaults that Russia practiced when the invasion began, or the NATO-style combined arms tactics that Western allies tried to teach to Ukraine.
The scenario is worsening fast for Ukraine, and adapting takes time. Phoenix gives two examples of changes in brigades with NATO armament such as the 47th, changes resulting from Russia’s dominance of airspace thanks to its fleet of reconnaissance drones and bombers: “The usefulness of the Leopard [German tanks] on the front line is now nil, they don’t last.” In an article published on Saturday, military officers consulted by The New York Times said that the 47th Brigade lost several U.S. Abrams tanks in Avdiivka because they do not have sufficient short-range anti-aircraft defenses against drones.
This isn’t the war that Putin launched in 2022. This isn’t the war that NATO spent decades training to fight for. This is something new. And Ukraine needs not only new weapons, but new tactics if it is going to win this fight.