By M. Salimi
A retired Swiss Army officer and military expert says European armies simply lack certain capabilities, such as global early warning, communications, navigation, strategic airlift and air strikes using strategic bombers, and will not be able to fill the gap entirely if the United States further reduces its role in Ukraine, warning that Europe cannot provide security guarantees to Ukraine.
Ralph Bosshard, a retired Swiss Army officer and an expert on military and political affairs, spoke to the Press TV website about the war in Ukraine and its wider implications.
It comes as the rift between Washington and Kiev has widened sharply, with President Donald Trump publicly declaring that it's time for Ukraine to get a new president. At the same time, the Trump administration has announced a deal for Russia to supply 300,000 metric tons of diesel to the US and global markets, explicitly linking it to Zelensky's refusal to stop striking Russian refineries.
Washington has been accused by Kiev of deliberately withholding intelligence on incoming Russian strikes and slowing down Starshield, the military satellite system used for battlefield communications, while Patriot interceptor missiles already paid for by European countries remain held up awaiting US War Secretary Pete Hegseth's signature.
Meanwhile, Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin several times in recent months and the Kremlin has indicated readiness to resume trilateral talks after the US midterm elections.
Trump's attack on Zelensky
Commenting on Trump's public statement that "it's time for Ukraine to get a new president," and whether this is a genuine assessment of Ukraine's political deadlock or a pressure tactic designed to force Kiev into accepting unfavorable terms, Bosshard said “neither one nor the other.”
“Trump is attacking Zelensky at his weakest point, namely the fact that Zelensky has so far failed to hold the presidential elections required by the Ukrainian constitution," he stated.
Bosshard added that the Trump administration likely assumes Zelensky has no realistic prospect of winning such an election and that it is well known in Washington that any Ukrainian president who makes concessions to the Russian side in negotiations would be in acute danger of losing his life.
"The likely course of Trump's rhetoric is clear: Zelensky will be blamed for the continuation of the war, for numerous further casualties and damage and Trump will assure his electorate during the election campaign that he would have been able to end the war, but that Zelensky alone prevented this. At a later stage, it cannot be ruled out that he will also blame certain European politicians, foremost among them Boris Johnson, for the continuation of the war," he said.
The diesel deal and attacks on refineries
Turning to the Trump administration's announced deal for Russia to supply 300,000 metric tons of diesel to the US and global markets, explicitly linked to Zelensky's refusal to stop striking Russian refineries and how he assesses the military logic of this trade-off, Bosshard said he is skeptical about the idea that “systematic attacks on Russian facilities for the extraction and processing of crude oil, as well as those for the distribution of ready-to-use petroleum products could turn the tide of the war."
He noted that there are sufficient buyers for Russian crude oil and natural gas worldwide, meaning Russia can still benefit from the revenue generated by these resources despite the Ukrainian attacks.
The analyst added that some in Kiev and Brussels may also have hoped to trigger an uprising by business leaders against the Putin administration, a move that to some may seem like a last resort to avert Ukraine's impending defeat.
"The expectation that attacks on refineries could hamper the Russian army's operations is entirely illusory. Before the army is forced to scale back its operations, supplies to civilian consumers would likely be restricted. Nor can I rule out the possibility that the Russian side has artificially caused the shortage of petroleum products in order to drive up prices. It is certainly a simple matter for the Russian armed forces to mislead Ukraine and NATO regarding the extent of the damage to oil industry facilities. The methods involved are well known and the means are available," he said.
Withheld intelligence and Starshield
On Ukraine's claims that the United States is deliberately withholding intelligence on incoming Russian strikes and slowing down Starshield, the military satellite system used for battlefield communications and how significantly this degrades Ukraine's defensive and offensive capabilities if accurate, Bosshard said the complaints about the lack of warnings prior to the launch of ballistic missiles – and presumably also prior to the launch of cruise missiles – show that the European allies “are unable to fill the gap if the Americans no longer provide such information.”
“Nor do they appear to have a replacement for the Starshield communications system. This makes defending against Russian long-range weapons even more difficult than it already is," he said.
"Trump is using these resources as leverage to influence developments in the Russian-Ukrainian war. By providing slightly more or less support in the area of intelligence, he is exerting subtle pressure on both Ukraine and Russia.”
He said it was reasonable to assume that the gaps in global communications and reconnaissance left by the Americans would also impair Ukraine's ability to strike targets deep within Russian territory, adding that these were precisely the kinds of attacks Trump wanted to see only in exceptional circumstances.
"He can now broker an end to mutual attacks with long-range weapons, in the full knowledge that Ukraine had hoped this would mark a turning point in the war. There are several other areas in which the major powers have refrained from an exchange of blows. A moratorium on strategic strikes could become another such area," Bosshard noted.
Patriot interceptors and air defense
On Zelensky's statement that Patriot interceptor missiles already paid for by European countries are being held up awaiting Hegseth's signature, Bosshard said stocks of interceptor missiles in the US and among its NATO allies are “dangerously low,” which could leave Western military facilities and armed forces worldwide “unprotected” should the last remaining missiles be fired off in Ukraine.
"If Western states, including the US, do not set aside a minimum reserve of interceptor missiles, they could lose their position in various regions of the world. It has now become apparent that military force is almost the only remaining means by which, in particular, the free-riding imperialists from Western Europe can still influence world affairs,” he said.
They must now set priorities. In the case of West Asia, if you will – this has already happened. The US has had to admit that it prioritizes the protection of Israel over that of its allies in the Persian Gulf. This could be repeated in other regions of the world. Overall, the trend continues whereby states worldwide no longer place their trust in the military strength of the West and are seeking other options to maintain their military security."
Can Europe fill the gap?
Asked whether Europe is capable of filling the gap—militarily and financially—if Washington reduces its role further, given that the US is now pivoting toward a transactional relationship with Russia while pressuring Ukraine, Bosshard said Europe “will not be able to fill the gap entirely, because European armies simply lack certain capabilities, such as global early warning, communications, navigation, strategic airlift, air strikes using strategic bombers and others."
"Generally speaking, my assessment is that the European allies who are currently calling most loudly for a war against Russia would be unlikely to successfully bring such a war to a close on Russia's borders. Conversely, in my view, Russia cannot conduct military operations deep into the heart of Europe, as the Russian army is currently not designed for that purpose," he stated.
From a financial and economic perspective, he also doubted that Europe could simultaneously fund the loudly demanded rearmament, the war in Ukraine, support for Ukrainian refugees, the consequences of the sanctions and the country's reconstruction without incurring massive debt in the long term.
Bosshard added that in many European countries it was probably already barely possible to increase the tax burden and levels of debt any further and that future generations would have to pay for all of it.
Witkoff-Putin meeting and prospects for talks
Turning to Witkoff’s meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg and the Kremlin's indication of readiness to resume trilateral talks after the US midterm elections in November, Bosshard said the Trump administration does not care whether Ukraine loses control of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk by the end of the year or not, which he said “is of interest only to the fanatics in Kiev."
"It is now too late for substantive negotiations before the US mid-term elections, but the Trump administration is spreading a degree of optimism and conveying the message that it is capable of somehow limiting or ending the Russian-Ukrainian war. It will deny the opposition at home the ability to strike a deal. If Russian diesel fuel enters the US market now, Trump will exploit this to claim that he has achieved an initial interim success and could achieve further ones," he noted.
"Of course, he will fail to mention that Vladimir Putin will play a decisive role in determining when this war ends and that China has no interest in seeing this war end unfavorably for Russia. Russia has not yet fully achieved what it set out to do, but once Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are encircled, that will be the moment when Russia considers its key war aims to have been met."
Ukraine's leverage at the negotiating table
On Zelensky's insistence that "if there are issues about Ukraine, our future, it can be acceptable only when we are at the table of negotiations," and what leverage Ukraine actually retains if the US and Russia negotiate bilaterally, given its dependence on Western weapons and intelligence, Bosshard said Zelensky can only continue the war for as long as he manages to play the countries of Western Europe off against the US.
“He himself has hardly any room for maneuver in negotiations as long as a fanatical faction in Kiev believes it can win the war and is even threatening members of negotiating delegations with death," he said.
"From this perspective, there is no point in bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table, nor the Western Europeans, who have de facto long since become a party to the war. One of the war's objectives – perhaps the most important one – is to eliminate Ukraine as a threat to Russia, not just for years to come, but for decades. The demographic, economic and financial consequences of the war suggest that this very objective is within reach. Ukrainian NATO membership seems further away than ever.”
The military situation on the front lines
Addressing Trump's argument that Russia is "a big machine" that keeps advancing and that Ukraine needs to "make a deal" before it loses more territory, the analyst said despite occasional Ukrainian counter-offensives, the Russian army is “advancing slowly but steadily” and is currently pushing towards the urban area comprising Konstantinovka/Kostiantynivka – Kramatorsk – Sloviansk.
“Even the predecessor of the current Chief of the General Staff, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had once suggested that the Ukrainian army is now only capable of offering delaying resistance," he noted.
"The firepower of artillery and drones now prevents rapid and long-range movements on the battlefield and the Ukrainians have been entrenched in cities and towns for months, preparing their defenses. The Russians also appear to be proceeding very methodically and slowly; they have acquired the necessary expertise in Mariupol and Bakhmut/Artemovsk to capture such fortified cities.”
He added that the Russians have “paid dearly for these lessons,” but they are “evidently very innovative and are proving quite capable of adapting to the Ukrainians' new approaches to warfare.”
“After a year on secondment to the Russian General Staff, I had already warned as early as 2015 against underestimating the Russians. Yet the West has quite clearly done just that."
Switzerland's vanishing neutrality
Asked whether Switzerland's role as a neutral intermediary becomes more relevant now that the US-Ukraine alliance is under unprecedented strain, or whether the polarized environment has made traditional neutrality increasingly difficult to maintain, Bosshard said the country has remained neutral only in the traditional military sense, but it is going along with the farce of so-called 'cognitive warfare' and has angered Russia by uncritically adopting almost all of the EU's sanctions against Russia.
"The so-called peace conference at the Bürgenstock in Central Switzerland, to which Russia was not invited, has turned out to be a flop. Switzerland may still be a venue for peace talks, but it can no longer play a mediating role. The Russians will be reluctant to rely on a mediator who is so compliant and, generally speaking, so easily pressured. Nor has Switzerland been able to make its mark within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe OSCE; this is likely to be visible at the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Switzerland this December. Today, it is other powers that are mediating," he stated.
"More generally, during my six years working at the OSCE in Vienna, I observed the gradual emergence of an atmosphere in which a willingness to negotiate was fundamentally interpreted as a sign of weakness, in which agreements reached carried little weight and in which states were divided into two groups according to the motto 'whoever is not for me is against me'."
Sovereignty and security guarantees after the war
Looking beyond this current crisis, on what it means for the broader principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity in Europe if the United States successfully forces a settlement on Russia's terms and what signal it sends to other nations that rely on US security guarantees, Bosshard said there are still numerous unresolved nationality issues in Europe, as well as territorial disputes dating from the First and Second World Wars and the period that followed.
“In my view, the Western Balkans – the former Yugoslavia – have not yet been fully stabilized. European diplomacy, notably the EU's External Action Service, has proved incapable of dealing with these problems adequately," he said.
"I have worked with Western European diplomats for many years and consider them incapable of tackling such complex problems properly. That is why I have high hopes for the Republic of Belarus's initiative to shape a Eurasian security architecture and I can only advise the countries involved to prevent Western European interference in the continent's problems. I also hope that China and other Eurasian countries can play a role in resolving the conflict in and around Ukraine.”
Europe, Bosshard noted, cannot provide security guarantees to Ukraine, nor to other countries.
“Moreover, the US's ability to provide guarantees of military security has its limits. Today, it is wise not to be drawn into Western bloc thinking and not to rely one-sidedly on a single partner: trade with China, benefit from Russia's military experience and occasionally offer the West something in the political and diplomatic sphere; that is my advice today."
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