Frayed Ties Tested in Post-Afghanistan Biden–Zelensky Meeting

T he hasty Afghanistan withdrawal, and President Biden’s trashing and abandonment of Afghan allies, shook Washington’s partners in general, and waiving sanctions on Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline this spring infuriated Eastern European allies in particular.

Thankfully, for Ukraine, its struggles are seen as more central to the ever-Atlanticist Biden administration, and, thankfully again, buttressing the country’s defenses against Russian meddling is certainly less costly from a U.S. perspective than direct involvement in Afghanistan. No nation-building necessary.

In this light, Biden’s meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last week went as well as it could have gone. The president needed to reassure Ukraine that Washington would continue to support the non-NATO member amid a continued Russian assault on its eastern Donbas region and a military buildup. This was an important and initial test directly in the aftermath of the Kabul catastrophe, and Biden more or less succeeded, avoiding blistering headlines about a festering dispute with Kyiv.

Ukraine remains at war with the Russian insurgency in the east, as it faces down the surge of Russian forces at the border. Despite the Kremlin’s claims to have withdrawn its troops in the spring, it’s kept many of them in place. Zelensky’s meeting wasn’t just critical for Ukraine’s security; it was also a bellwether for U.S. support of embattled allies in authoritarian crosshairs.

Accordingly, the Ukrainian president’s delegation received the reassuring platitudes that one could’ve expected from Biden and his team, including a new $60 million security-assistance package and a shipment of more than 2 million vaccine doses to Ukraine. Zelensky responded magnanimously in kind: “In the difficult times for the world and for the United States, for Ukraine, still you found time for us, and we are very grateful for this indeed,” he said at the start of the meeting. But he wasn’t able to eke out of his American counterpart Ukraine’s two biggest potential prizes: a clear commitment to kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to hasten Ukraine’s accession to NATO.

Instead, there was another, more secretive, success that Zelensky won, according to his comments to Ukrainian outlets: a pledge by Biden to use sanctions to stop Nord Stream 2 if Moscow attempts to weaponize the pipeline. He called Biden’s concession a “big victory.”

Nord Stream 2, which runs over 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, will lessen Ukraine’s leverage over Europe-bound gas flows from Russia that pass through its territory, earning the post-Soviet state transit fees. If the reports are true, and if Biden was serious about his promise, he might have to follow through on it sooner rather than later, as Moscow is almost certain to use whatever leverage it has to bring Kyiv to heel. This begs asking why Biden didn’t just move to block the pipeline in the first place, rather than cave to the outgoing government of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

While the audience Zelensky secured with Biden in Washington seems to have been enough to persuade him to keep his sharpest complaints about U.S. policy to private meetings, American lawmakers, unsurprisingly, are not impressed by Biden’s pledge. “President Biden’s promise to sanction Russia if it uses NS2 to harm Ukraine rings hollow and will never be fulfilled,” Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, one of his Democratic colleagues, agrees: “We shouldn’t wait for Putin to threaten Ukraine’s energy security when his track record shows that he does not play by the rules,” she told Politico. The era of Nord Stream 2 scuffles between the executive and Congress was not ended by Zelensky’s trip. The administration’s handling of the pipeline is one indication of its willingness to support certain U.S. allies in a post-Afghanistan world.

And the policy does not resemble a resoundingly clear declaration of support, especially considering the Afghanistan debacle. So in his talks with Biden, Zelensky also expounded on the value that Ukraine brings Washington. According to a person who was briefed on their meeting, Zelensky told Biden that the world is watching to see if the U.S. continues to stand with its allies, and particularly those facing down external military threats. Zelensky pointed out that Ukrainians are fighting for themselves, whether or not Washington continues to support them, and unlike the Afghan defense forces, Ukraine puts the military aid it receives to good use.

The Ukrainian leader also argued that if Biden wants to bolster NATO, he should revive the alliance, which faces internal fractures and a growing European desire for strategic autonomy, by bringing in a new, battle-tested member already meeting its burden-sharing responsibilities. Zelensky pointed to his country’s impressive demonstration of airlift capabilities during the evacuation of Kabul, which far exceeded the airlift capabilities that most of NATO’s other members contributed. In the end, however, his hopes to get Biden to commit to a faster track for Ukraine to join NATO were dashed last week, though a joint statement reaffirmed previous U.S. support of Ukraine’s aspirations to join the security alliance.

Zelensky makes a persuasive case outlining Ukraine’s role as a star U.S. ally. Ukraine is pulling its weight, at minimal cost to Washington. Meanwhile, although it remains outside of NATO, the strength of the government in Kyiv will determine just how much Moscow can be kept at bay. Biden will have other focuses directly implicating U.S. military forces, in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere. Approximately self-sufficient allies are hard to come by, and Ukraine is as close as one can get. It’s not a costly foreign misadventure, but so far, the president’s record is mixed here. In waiving the pipeline sanctions, he opted to favor an outgoing German government that presides over insufficient levels of defense spending over Ukraine. Biden’s Atlantic tilt in an era of authoritarian challenges has potential, but thus far it has also limited the full extent of support that the U.S. provides Ukraine.

To be sure, Kyiv got some of what it wanted when the administration prepared a new defense assistance package ahead of the meeting. The $60 million Biden package, which includes the Javelin anti-armor missiles of which the Ukrainians are so fond, is viewed as a positive development by Ukraine’s boosters in Washington, though many also wonder what happened to a $100 million military-assistance package that was mysteriously put on ice just ahead of Biden’s Putin summit. That question was left unanswered.

There was also concern among members of the Ukrainian delegation to Washington that Biden, despite a new joint U.S. strategic partnership with Ukraine, just wasn’t aware of the significance of Russia’s threat in the Black Sea, where recent Russian drills have frayed Ukrainian nerves. The president is committed rhetorically, and his professed focus on great-power competition with authoritarian rivals would suggest that the administration would implement a more robust strategy than the one it’s currently pursuing. Kyiv’s doubts might be assuaged somewhat by some of the positive developments from last week, but while Ukraine can count on Biden officials to say the right things, it just can’t count on much corresponding action. In the aftermath of Afghanistan, Zelensky has made an impressive argument for Ukraine’s congruence with U.S. interests, but the administration can’t always be counted on to do the right thing.

Which is where Congress comes in. An amendment added to the National Defense Authorization Act by the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday — the night of the Biden-Zelensky meeting — is expected to force the sale of some air-defense systems that could help Ukraine defend its Black Sea coast.

If that provision were to become law, the Department of Defense would be required to send Congress a report describing options to support Ukraine “in addressing integrated air defense and missile defense gaps.” The amendment also requires the report to list options for the sale of U.S. missile batteries that aren’t being used already. In practice, this would result in the sale of two Iron Dome batteries that are currently sitting in storage — which the Ukrainian delegation knew well and therefore advocated strongly (and successfully) for the measure in meetings with members of Congress.

An Iron Dome for Ukraine would be a boon for the country’s defense capabilities amid the Russian onslaught, freeing up U.S. hands somewhat, but more importantly, the proposal is one example of how Congress can step in when Biden fails to live up to his lofty pledges to stand with democracies and keep authoritarian powers at bay.