The Morning Dispatch: 100 Days of War in Ukraine

Happy Friday! Sure, the Celtics mounted a miraculous comeback over the Warriors in the fourth quarter of last night’s NBA finals game. Yes, the Cubs upset the Cardinals in the rivals’ first meeting of the season. 

But Thursday’s most impressive athletic feat was undoubtedly Texas eighth-grader Harini Logan spelling 21 words in 90 seconds to win a sudden-death spell-off and the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Pure electricity.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• OPEC+ oil producers agreed Thursday to ramp up oil production in July and August—by 648,000 barrels per day—to partially make up for shortfalls as Europe and other countries eschew Russian energy. The White House has been pushing Saudi Arabia—a key member of OPEC—to increase drilling as energy costs soar, and President Joe Biden will reportedly visit the country in the coming months, despite vowing during his 2020 campaign to make the kingdom a global “pariah” for its killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

• Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, claimed Thursday he was told by the Commission on State Emergency Communications that Peter Arredondo—chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and incident commander during last week’s shooting—was not aware of the repeat 911 calls coming from students within the classroom as police officers waited more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman. “Uvalde PD was the one receiving the 911 calls for 45 minutes while … 19 officers were sitting in a hallway for 45 minutes,” he said. “We don’t know if it was being communicated to those people or not.”

• Dr. Ashish Jha—the White House’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator—told reporters Thursday that COVID-19 vaccines could be authorized and available for children under five years of age as early as June 21, if the remaining regulatory hurdles go as expected. A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is set to meet and review Pfizer and Moderna’s data on June 14 and 15, after which the Centers for Disease Control will need to make its own determination and formal recommendation.

• In a ruling issued Thursday, a Pennsylvania judge directed counties to count mail-in and absentee ballots from last month’s primary that had no handwritten date on the return envelope. The ruling is a minor victory for David McCormick—the former hedge fund executive who currently trails Dr. Mehmet Oz by less than 1,000 votes in the state’s Republican U.S. Senate primary—but it’s unclear how many additional ballots will be affected.

• Former President Donald Trump on Thursday endorsed venture capitalist Blake Masters in Arizona’s Republican U.S. Senate primary over Attorney General Mark Brnovich and businessman Jim Lamon. The winner of the primary—set to be held on August 2—will face Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in November. 

• The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced Thursday it was adding 71 entities based in Russia and Belarus to its Entity List, prohibiting American firms from doing business with them unless granted a specific waiver. The BIS has now added 322 such entities to the list since Russia’s invasion began in February.

• The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs—decreased by 11,000 week-over-week to 200,000 last week, remaining near historic lows.

• The latest COVID-19 surge appears to have peaked in recent days, with the average number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States declining 21 percent over the past week. The average number of daily deaths attributed to COVID-19 continue to fall as well, down 40 percent over the same time period and below 200 per day for the first time since March 2020.

Is the Tide Turning in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is about to turn 100 days old. 

The grim milestone is in some ways a victory for Ukraine, which many Western analysts—and arguably Russian President Vladimir Putin himself—believed would fold under Russian might within a month or two, if not a couple of weeks. Kyiv would fall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would either flee or be killed, and Russian forces would grind down a determined—but outgunned—Ukrainian insurgency. 

But none of that happened. Ukrainian forces beat back Russian troops attempting to topple the capital city, and thousands of Ukrainians who fled Kyiv in February and March have since returned home. Zelensky is still leading a functional Ukrainian government, and become one of the most famous—and sympathetic—figures in the world in the process. Western countries are continuing to provide a steady stream of economic aid and weaponry, forcing Russia to pay for every gained mile in troops and equipment it can ill-afford to replace. 

Ukraine’s early battlefield successes—plus a savvy global public relations push and reinvigorated NATO—have led Western observers to strike a triumphant tone when discussing the trajectory of the war. But as David noted in Tuesday’s French Press (🔒), the conflict is nowhere near over, and Ukraine’s victory is far from a foregone conclusion. Russia’s strategy has changed with the battlefield; its initial military humiliations have given way to a brutal war of attrition.

And despite Ukrainian counterattacks, Russia is gaining ground—though the gains are still “incremental, grinding, and costly,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. After the months-long siege of Mariupol ended with the last Ukrainian holdouts surrendering in mid-May, Russian troops now command a crescent from the coast of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine through the eastern region of Donbas and up to north of Kharkiv.

Zelensky told Luxembourg’s parliament this week Russian forces now hold about 20 percent of Ukraine, claiming they’re trying to “rusify” the occupied areas—issuing marriage certificates in Russian, flying Russian flags, requiring use of the ruble, and deporting some Ukrainian civilians to Russia. More than 230,000 Ukrainian children in total have been sent across borders, Zelensky claimed.

On the front lines in the eastern Donbas region, Russian troops have conquered several towns and are gaining control of the key industrial city of Severodonetsk, and pushing to capture another one. With those two won, Russian forces may declare full control of the Luhansk province in Donbas—one of the two regions Putin has declared republics independent from Ukraine.

“In the last several days, the Russians have made some incremental progress in and around the Donbas,” Colin Kahl, an undersecretary at the Department of Defense, told reporters Wednesday. “They have not had a decisive breakthrough. And the Ukrainians are putting up a heck of a fight. And right now, it’s a concentrated artillery duel in the east.”

Ukrainian officials have estimated Russian troops outnumber Ukrainian forces in Donbas by seven to one, and as many as 100 Ukrainian troops are dying in action daily. The Dispatch can’t verify casualty or deployment figures, and they—along with most claims made by current combatants in a conflict—should be taken with a grain of salt.

The Donbas region’s proximity to Russia has made it easier for troops stationed there to resupply than troops involved in the initial Kyiv push, and they’ve had more time to establish defensive positions. The region’s open terrain is also more conducive to Russia’s superior artillery hammering Ukrainian cities and troop positions. “They are carpet-bombing us,” Luhansk official Serhiy Haidai told Politico. “The cities they attack are simply being erased from the face of the earth.”

Ukraine’s success to date has been powered largely by its people’s will to resist Russian aggression, but, exhausted and under-equipped, some fighters are losing steam. “We are being sent to certain death,” one said in a video uploaded to Telegram, pledging not to fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support, and military leadership. “We are not alone like this, we are many.” That said, Russia continues to have morale problems of its own: Ukrainian intelligence released an intercepted phone call of Russian troops complaining they lacked food and medicine and that the military had sent troops without proper medical screening. Hundreds of Russian troops have deserted or refused to fight.

Ukrainian leaders are hoping another round of Western aid will replenish morale—and their stockpiles. Ukrainians are now using British, French, NATO, and American artillery in the Donbas, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. The Pentagon on Wednesday announced the U.S.’s 11th tranche of equipment, worth $700 million—five counter-artillery radars, 1,000 Javelin shoulder rockets, 6,000 anti-armor weapons, four helicopters, ammunition, and other equipment. Reuters reported Wednesday the administration also plans—pending congressional approval—to sell Ukraine advanced drones with capacity for up to eight missiles and up to 30 hours of flight time.

This round of military aid also includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) that the Biden administration—worried about escalation of the war—was reluctant to send until it extracted a promise from Ukrainian leaders they would not use the highly precise, long-range artillery to strike targets within Russia’s borders. (A Kremlin spokesman said Russia does not trust Zelensky to stick to that pledge.) HIMARS can be armed for a 190-mile range, but this batch will have munitions with about 43 miles range. That may be enough, RAND Corporation senior defense analyst Scott Boston told The Dispatch, because Ukrainians will largely use the HIMARS to strike Russian artillery—most of which has less range than that.

The larger concern is whether Ukraine will be able to effectively use and maintain the HIMARS. Kahl, the Pentagon official, estimated it’ll take three weeks to train Ukrainians on the systems, but declined to estimate how long it’ll take until they’re fully operational in Ukraine. “We’re not seeing the Ukrainian defenses buckle. They’re hanging on, but it is a grinding fight,” Kahl said. “We believe that these additional capabilities will arrive in a time frame that’s relevant.”

The U.S. will assess whether to send more, but Boston believes that Ukraine can do a lot with four HIMARS if it has sufficient rockets—though the small number leaves little leeway for breakdowns. “There are not going to be spare parts for them other than what we send, and some aspects of these weapons may require special expertise to operate or maintain,” Boston said. “It’s not just like ordering spare tires for them from Michelin; if there is a problem with the launcher software or hardware then it will need people who know what they’re doing in order to fix it. I would not want to trivialize all the steps required to turn this into a meaningful capability for the Ukrainians rather than a thing they use for a few days before it breaks down.”

Ukrainian officials continue to call for more, and more advanced weapons. “We work every day to strengthen our defense,” Zelenskyy said Saturday. “This is primarily a supply of weapons.”

“Ukraine has the will but limited resources; Russians have a lot of guns,” Boston said. “Russians will probably have more trouble holding ground and securing their rear areas than Ukrainians will in their own country, but taking ground back in volume will not be quick or easy.”

Worth Your Time

• In the Washington Post, Josh Rogin argues some congressional Republicans are forgetting one of the key takeaways from the Cold War: that exploiting brain drain from autocratic societies is a “smart and righteous” strategy. “The whole world is competing for the talents of those who are fleeing from Hong Kong and Putin’s Russia,” Rogin writes, noting Republicans have blocked efforts to ease visa restrictions for high-skilled workers from those regions. “Cruz claimed that accepting Hong Kongers was the first step to opening our borders and that the Chinese Communist Party could exploit the program to send spies to the United States. This ignores the fact that China has much easier ways to get spies into our country and that the CCP is trying to stop Hong Kongers from leaving because Beijing knows the brain-drain risk for China is real. … Republicans’ excessive fear of immigration should not waste a strategic opportunity for the United States to strengthen itself and weaken its rivals at the same time. Congress should work to ensure that China’s and Russia’s losses are America’s gains.”

• President Biden published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week describing inflation as his “top economic priority,” but Peter Suderman isn’t convinced. “On the same day that Biden’s inflation op-ed appeared, Bloomberg News reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had renewed an antitrust investigation into Amazon,” he writes for Reason. “[Biden’s hand-picked FTC Chair Lina] Khan’s approach to antitrust is focused on discarding what has long been the legal test for antitrust actions: whether a merger enhances consumer welfare. Instead, progressive antitrust activists in the Khan mold have focused more on scale—or bigness—itself, often under the justification that limiting corporate size promotes competition with smaller firms. … [But] antitrust efforts that target bigness alone end up decreasing corporate efficiency since mergers and acquisitions can allow for more streamlined production processes. Reducing efficiency, in turn, drives up prices, contributing to the inflation that Biden says he’s determined to fight.”

• The Reagan Foundation continued its “A Time for Choosing” speaker series on Thursday, inviting Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska to outline his vision for the future of the Republican Party. “Think how long it’s been since the American people have heard a big, optimistic, Reagan-like aspirational message,” Sasse said. “A 33-year-old American has only seen a Republican president win the popular vote once in her entire lifetime, and that was in the aftermath of 9/11 when the Dems decided to run a throwback, anti-war candidate from the 1960s. Who is trying to win this woman’s vote? Shouldn’t the Republican Party have something to say to her? We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to be speaking to people who tuned both parties out long ago. We’ve got to be speaking to men and women who can’t stand preach-to-the-choir-politics because in the real world they’re the ones getting things done.”

Something Cool

Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• On the site today, new intern Isaac Willour talks to some of the groups opposing new Title IX non-discrimination standards that include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Meanwhile, Nicolaus Mills ponders whether the West will help Ukraine rebuild if and when it rebuffs Russia’s assault, and Michael Sobolik shines a spotlight on the strategic importance of small Indo-Pacific nations in constraining China’s global advance.

• It’s finally here! Sarah’s long-promised Dispatch Book Club kicked off on Thursday with David Eagleman’s Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. Exclusively for Dispatch members, the Dispatch Book Club will feature one book each month, through the end of the year, accompanied by a community discussion and companion podcast. At the beginning of each month Sarah will open a new discussion thread, and at the end of that month she’ll release the members-only podcast featuring a discussion of the selected book—often with the author.

• This week’s edition of The Current is all about drones—and the benefits and risks that come with the rapidly developing technology. “One company dominates the drone market—China’s Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI),” Klon writes. “Readers of this newsletter will be well-acquainted with the concerns around Chinese tech companies collecting American information and making it available to the government in Beijing, and these concerns certainly extend to DJI. In fact, what’s truly amazing is that DJI’s market dominance has persisted even after the United States has taken significant actions against the company.”

• President Biden delivered a rare primetime address last night, calling on Congress to enact more stringent gun control measures. In Thursday’s Stirewaltisms (🔒), Chris argues these types of speeches have almost always been entirely for show. “[Biden] is only the most recent president to be afflicted by the unhealthy attachment to the belief in the power of presidential persuasion in American political life,” he writes. “One of the laziest forms of political analysis is to attach to the sitting president superhuman powers of persuasion and then blame the same president for failing to use all of his might to win the day.”

• It was a jam-packed episode of Advisory Opinions on Thursday! From the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp verdict, to the acquittal of Michael Sussmann on charges of lying to the FBI, to the latest Supreme Court ruling on state laws targeting social media platforms, David and Sarah touch on it all. Plus: the latest developments in Pennsylvania’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, and a new Gallup poll about abortion.

• And on today’s episode of The Remnant, Jonah is joined by his American Enterprise Institute colleague Tony Mills for an ultra-nerdy exploration of the American political tradition. Is free market capitalism corrosive? Can liberalism alone sustain the United States? Why is civic republicanism important?

Let Us Know

Did you participate in spelling bees in elementary and/or middle school? If so, do you still remember the word(s) that tripped you up?