Elbridge Colby, President Trump’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, is fast becoming the new Jake Sullivan on Capitol Hill — well meaning, perhaps, yet befuddled and self-defeating. In attempting to hoard U.S. military assets, Colby is about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — intentionally or not.
We first witnessed this in the lead up to Trump’s bold strikes against the Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As reported by Semafor, Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, ran into “resistance” from Colby, “who has long opposed moving U.S. military assets from Asia to the Middle East.”
Colby, eerily echoing Krook — a character from Charles Dickens’ classic novel “Bleak House” who squirrels away legal documents — is yet again trying to hoard American hardware. The White House confirmed that it is withholding “155mm artillery rounds, Patriot air defense, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Stinger, AIM-7 and Hellfire missiles” previously intended for Ukraine.
Colby’s rationale is that they are needed for a potential future confrontation with China in the Indo-Pacific. Yet again, Colby myopically fails to see that, amid the ideological war already underway between the U.S. and China, Washington can deter Beijing’s designs on Taiwan by denying the “Axis of Evil” wins in Iran and Ukraine.
Ukraine will pay the immediate price for Colby’s short-sighted policies. Russian President Vladmir Putin is intentionally targeting and killing Ukrainian civilians — and now, wittingly or not, Colby is playing into the hands of the Kremlin.
Colby’s capitulation to Moscow could not come at a better time for Putin. Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, and Putin is slowly losing whatever leverage over Ukraine he believed he once had – air attacks and mass.
Russia’s economy is on the brink. Citizens in Moscow are regularly experiencing firsthand the effects of war, and Sergei Shoigu has been back to North Korea begging for more help, securing an additional 30,000 soldiers to do Russia’s fighting in Ukraine.
Momentum is beginning to shift back in Ukraine’s favor. You can feel Putin’s growing desperation, but he keeps adding new demands. His latest is that NATO must stop training Ukrainian soldiers in the West.
Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb” was a wakeup call. Ukrainian special forces launched drone strikes against four strategic Russian air bases — Belaya, Olenya, Dyagilevo, and Ivanovo — reportedly destroying 34 percent of the Russian strategic bomber fleet used to launch cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine has now demonstrated operational reach. Russian forces are vulnerable nearly everywhere to Ukrainian drones, missiles, and guided bombs.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s reach resulted in the destruction of Russia’s Eighth Army headquarters in the Donetsk region. Its commander, Colonel Ruslan Goryachkin was killed in the Storm Shadow missile strike — and Moscow’s strategic assaults against the strategic Ukrainian towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk disrupted.
Against all odds, Ukraine is masterfully waging a campaign of interdiction and deep strikes. They are targeting Russian weapon systems used to attack Ukrainian civilians and critical energy infrastructure and the Kremlin’s air defense systems defending them.
Ukraine is also strategically striking Putin’s ballistic missile launchers and the airfields where bombers armed with cruise missiles and glide bombs are stationed. Kyiv is also targeting and destroying oil refineries, production facilities, airbases and storage facilities deeper and deeper inside the Russian interior using domestically produced long-range drones.
By mid-June, Ukraine had already conducted long-range strikes against the Kristall oil depot, Engels-2 and Dyagilevo air bases, Savasleyka airfield , Azot chemical plant, Kazan gunpowder plant, and VNIIR-Progress facility. On Tuesday, Ukrainian drones struck the Kupol Electromechanical Plant in Izhevsk, about 620 miles east of Moscow, which produced air defense systems and drones for the Russian military.
Russia and Crimea remain vulnerable to these attacks. Russian air defense networks have not been able to defeat, much less defend, their forward-deployed headquarters, defense industry facilities, air bases, seaports, and oil-gas infrastructure. Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov, chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, is in a precarious position.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to hold its own in the close fight. Russia’s highly anticipated summer offensive, launched in May, experienced initial success in the Donetsk region but has since flatlined. According to Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Russian forces were unsuccessful in penetrating Ukrainian defenses.
Significantly, Ukrainian forces continue to make the Kremlin pay for every inch of terrain they gain. To date, Russia has surpassed 1,022,090 casualties, including 21,750 since June 12, for an average of 1,087 per day.
Yet tragically, even as the Russian army continues to falter on the battlefield, the Kremlin has increased its targeting of Ukrainian civilians in their homes, schools, churches and markets with relentless drone attacks — 5,438 in June alone.
Colby must understand that, despite Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blaming “Kyiv and Washington for the lack of progress in peace talks,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has no desire to negotiate a ceasefire, much less a peace deal. Nor does Beijing strategically want one anytime soon.
Putin believes Ukraine is Russia, and on June 20 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he said just that. “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people,” he said. “In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. … We have an old rule. Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”
Colby is dangerously close to creating a very bleak outcome for Team Trump and the White House in Ukraine. As Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary General discussed with Brian Kilmeade Wednesday on FOX and Friends, Putin is deeply concerned by Trump’s success in getting NATO member-states to increase their defense spending goal to 5 percent GDP.
Like the fictional Krook in “Bleak House,” Colby, in part, holds Trump’s key to winning the global war that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are waging against the West. Colby must not be allowed to hoard America’s military might in the Pacific when the path to victory is now alongside our allies in Ukraine. Kurilla won that battle against Colby in Iran. Now, the newly appointed commander of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, must do so for Ukraine.
As we argued last month, for Team Trump, World War III begins in Iran and ends in Ukraine.
Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.