Condoleeza Rice says Vladimir Putin must be stopped and that significantly more arms must be dispatched to Ukraine. A short opinion piece titled “Time is not on Ukraine’s side” that the former secretary of state penned along with a former Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, amounts to an urgent appeal for more military assistance not only to help Kyiv beat back the Russian invasion but to avert a direct confrontation between Russia and America. 

Writing in the Washington Post, Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates stated, “Both of us have dealt with Putin on a number of occasions, and we are convinced he believes time is on his side.” Ms. Rice, who served as national security advisor under President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2005 and who was the nation’s top diplomat between January 2005 and January 2009, is a fluent speaker of Russian and is widely regarded as one of the country’s foremost authorities on international affairs. Mr. Gates was secretary of defense under two presidents, between 2006 and 2011. 

The two are of the mind that Mr. Putin fully intends to maintain control over the positions taken during the invasion to date, because in the Russian strongman’s mind they could ultimately serve as bridgeheads for a renewed offensive. “For Putin, defeat is not an option,” they wrote, positing that “he cannot cede to Ukraine the four eastern provinces he has declared part of Russia,” and adding that “if he cannot be militarily successful this year, he must retain control of positions in eastern and southern Ukraine that provide future jumping-off points for renewed offensives to take the rest of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, control the entire Donbas region and then move west.”

Regardless of whether those prognostications prove correct, the war in Ukraine could be heading to one of its most violent phases yet, as indications surface of Ukraine’s intent to open a new front in a bid to recapture  one of the four regions the Kremlin illegally annexed in September, Zaporizhzhia. Reporting from Simferopol on Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula on Monday, the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti claimed that Ukrainian troops are preparing to cross the Dnieper River near the Kakhovka reservoir, which is just downstream from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The Russian report quotes a Russian-installed official, Vladimir Rogov, who said that the water level of the Dnieper has dropped sharply recently and that this is happening because “Kyiv is gradually blocking the hydraulic gates of hydroelectric power stations on the dams of the Dnieper cascade in the upper reaches.” For Mr. Rogov, “this indirectly confirms that Ukrainian troops are preparing to cross the Dnieper in the area of ​​​​the Kakhovka reservoir” and that the town of Energodar and the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant “could become one of the directions for landing troops.”

The Russian’s assessment dovetails with a recent statement by the head of Ukraine’s nuclear utility that “our best hope” of regaining control of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, “is with the Ukrainian armed forces.” The Russians have averred that Ukrainian troops have of late “increased the intensity of shelling of the  Zaporizhzhya region.”

Ukrainian officials, for their part, reported more Russian shelling attacks in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk and  Zaporizhzhya over the weekend.

Amid ongoing fighting along in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s east and reports of new joint military drills conducted between Belarus and Russia, speculation of a violent new front opening in the heart of the country cannot be underestimated and underscores the urgency of the warning made succinctly by Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates. 

The warning is chiefly that “absent another major Ukrainian breakthrough and success against Russian forces, Western pressures on Ukraine to negotiate a ceasefire will grow as months of military stalemate pass,” and that “under current circumstances, any negotiated ceasefire would leave Russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they are ready.”

Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates emphasize that despite Ukraine’s brilliant performance on the battlefield, much of the country’s mineral wealth, industrial capacity, and considerable agricultural land are now under Russian control. In order for Ukraine to successfully eject the Russians not only from the eastern provinces but from the country’s south, they say, Ukraine needs much more mobile armor. They credit Congress for allocating funds but say that the reinforcement is needed within weeks, not months. 

They also called on NATO members to provide the Ukrainians with “longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment.”

On Friday the White House announced $3.75 billion in weapons and other aid for Ukraine and its European backers. According to the AP, this latest package of military assistance was Washington’s biggest to date for Ukraine. It included 50 Bradley armored vehicles and 500 of the anti-tank missiles they can fire. 

In their article, Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates proffered that owing to the logistical challenges of sending American Abrams heavy tanks to Ukraine in addition to the Bradleys, “Germany and other allies should fill this need.”