Despite billions of dollars in additional weapons and security assistance announced by NATO this week, allied officials said Ukraine would not be ready to launch a sharp counteroffensive or retake significant swathes of territory from Russia until next year, The New York Times reports.
Deliveries of missiles, combat vehicles, ammunition and air defence equipment from the US and European countries will take weeks, if not months, to reach the front line. Some of the new weapons have not even been procured or built yet.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the long-awaited F-16s fighter jets will be delivered to Ukraine this summer. But even then they could be used mainly for defensive purposes, as allies on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Washington debate whether the warplanes could enter Russian airspace to attack. President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania said in a brief interview on Wednesday:
On many occasions, you could see that we can decide, but unfortunately we cannot deliver efficiently. This is a huge disappointment for me personally, because Ukrainians are expecting that those goods will come, this military equipment will reach Ukraine, but it’s not happening.
Thanking the allies for the ammunition on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “we expect them to be delivered as soon as possible to save as many lives as possible.”
Another NATO promise
Most of the promises made to Ukraine at the NATO summit were described as long-term commitments to ensure the country’s security over the next decade. These included a new NATO-led weapons and training coordination centre based in Germany and donations to support alliance countries to the tune of $43 billion in 2025, according to The New York Times.
A senior NATO official said such support would put Ukraine on a path to fight back against Russia next year, while Ukraine would expect to receive Western weapons and move more of its troops to the front.
At the same time, a senior US defence official said the Ukrainians would continue to defend themselves over the next six months, but with constant fumbling on the battlefield would ultimately fail to make significant gains. Both officials spoke on condition that their names not be released in accordance with alliance protocols.
Did NATO and US aid help?
US officials and analysts say the situation on the battlefield has changed significantly over the past few weeks as the roughly $61 billion in aid approved by Congress in May has begun to bolster Ukraine’s defences. Officials say the replenishment has helped Ukraine slow Russia’s territorial advances in Donetsk in the east and halted a Russian counter-offensive near Kharkiv in the northeast, The New York Times reports.
But the Russian airstrikes on Monday underscored Ukraine’s urgent need for air defences. Last spring, Mr. Zelensky asked for seven sophisticated Patriot air defence systems to protect Ukrainian cities, but his request was granted at the summit.
Instead, Ukraine will receive three additional Patriot batteries: two from Germany and Romania, previously announced, and one from the US. It will also receive another powerful air defence system, known as SAMP/T, which Italy promised a few weeks ago.
Another Patriot system will be delivered piecemeal for now to replace broken or worn-out parts of batteries already in Ukraine, said Ruben Brekelmans, the Dutch defence minister. The Netherlands had hoped to collect enough components from across Europe to send a complete Patriot, “but Ukraine can already use the parts we are supplying, so that doesn’t mean we have to wait for others,” Mr. Brekelmans said.
Of course, several allies have promised new help, although it is unclear when exactly what material will be delivered.
Aid from NATO member states
Mr. Brekelmans also said the Netherlands would buy missiles for F-16 fighter jets to the value of $326 million, which it has already pledged to Ukraine. Canada announced it would provide about $367 million for Ukraine’s armed forces, including for pilot training. Britain will provide artillery, machine gun ammunition, anti-tank missiles and other equipment. New Zealand, a non-NATO ally, said it would provide $4 million for the purchase and development of military drones out of a total aid package of $16 million, according to The New York Times.
Last week, the US announced a $2.3 billion military aid package for Ukraine, including about $150 million for air defence interceptors, artillery and mortar shells and anti-tank weapons to be shipped immediately. Most of the remaining $2.2 billion will be spent on Patriot interceptors and other air defence missiles that will be delivered in the coming months.
On Thursday, the Biden administration announced $225 million that included a new Patriot battery, air defence interceptors, artillery shells and other munitions to be rushed to Ukraine from the Pentagon’s stockpile.
Over the past two years, the war has depleted NATO allies’ stockpiles and demonstrated how slow governments and commercial manufacturers have been to ramp up weapons production.
Defence industry is still waiting for new contracts
Micael Johansson, chief executive of Swedish defence giant Saab Group, said the defence industry was still waiting for new long-term government contracts, but that manufacturers could work more closely to ensure suppliers such as gunpowder companies had time to meet demand. Mr Johansson said at a German Marshall Fund forum during the summit.
Are we doing enough as industries? Probably not.
The war has been “a huge wake-up call,” he said. Before the start of the conflict in 2022, Europe “had been optimising their capacity and capabilities to more or less a peace-dividend sort of situation. And all of a sudden everyone wants everything from us at the same time, everyone. So a little bit of the problem ends up in our lap.”
Fears of escalation
The military alliance is also on alert for further escalation of the military conflict. Some allies at the summit said they would buy sea mines to protect their borders in the Baltic Sea. The US announced it would deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles and possibly long-range hypersonic weapons to Germany. NATO’s procurement agency signed a contract worth about $700 million to buy Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
But when it came to Ukraine, the allies disagreed on whether the weapons they supplied could be used to strike deep into Russian territory. President Edgars Rinkevics of Latvia said.
Use all weapons without any restrictions.
Mr. Brekelmans, the Dutch defence minister, said the Netherlands also did not restrict Ukraine from striking military targets in Russia, but described ongoing discussions in the alliance about how far across the border strikes could be carried out. Last year, the Netherlands pledged to provide Ukraine with F-16s from its aging fleet.
Belgium is also providing F-16s, although Prime Minister Alexander de Croo has said the 30 fighters his country will provide until 2028 can only be used over Ukrainian territory. Belgium is among allies, including the US and Germany, that have resisted giving Ukraine broad leeway to launch counter-strikes against Russia, The New York Times reports.
Latvia’s Defence Minister Andris Spruds, who heads the coalition, says thirteen allies have already committed tens of millions of dollars to help Ukraine build or buy up to a million drones by next year.
The Ukrainian military is already using drones produced by its defence industry to strike targets in Russia. A senior NATO official said the targets included oil refineries, whose production has been cut by 17 per cent. Mr Spruds said on Wednesday:
Already, some of the drones are in operation and combat. At the same time, of course, we are also scaling up, as those drones will be provided as soon as possible.
Criticism of dissenters
If anything positive can be said about this week’s NATO summit in Washington, it is that it prompted a series of thoughtful criticisms from the few remaining citadels of dissent in the American foreign policy community, according to The American Conservative.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Government published a symposium “to reflect on the past and future of the alliance.” Scholar and author Anatole Lieven, who organised the symposium, wrote:
NATO likes to describe itself as “the most successful alliance in history.”….. What is too often forgotten, however, is that the war was prevented not only by NATO solidarity, but also by NATO prudence. Successive US administrations, with the full support of their European allies, have rejected calls for an aggressive policy aimed at rolling back Soviet power in Eastern Europe.
Military alliance self-assessment work
A statement issued Monday by the American Committee for US-Russian Concord expressed the wish that NATO would take the opportunity of this week’s summit to “take a cold look at itself, its record and its mission – and begin the hard work of self-evaluation.”
And yet another statement issued by a constellation of foreign policy experts warned against another round of expansion:
Admitting Ukraine would reduce the security of the United States and NATO Allies, at considerable risk to all.
And yet, as for NATO: Message delivered, message ignored. This week’s summit showed that NATO is obligated and determined to continue to act as if the alliance is operating in a world shaped by its successes – demonstrating a blind insistence that the alliance is not only necessary, but has been right all along.
NATO’s main institutional prerogative at the moment is not the defeat of Russia or the collective defence of the West, whatever that means. It is its own survival, and so in Washington the alliance is busy inventing more and more reasons to justify its relevance and, ultimately, its very existence.
The main justification naturally revolves around the war in Ukraine. For months, US and European officials and government-funded strategists have been slowly laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as “Ukraine’s bridge to NATO.”
In late June, James O’Brien, a protégé of the late Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, now Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, told reporters that he viewed the NATO summit as “an opportunity to mark Ukraine’s full integration into the Western structures that its government and people say it wants.” O’Brien went on to say that he expects the U.S. and EU member states to provide “a clear bridge laid for Ukraine’s accession to NATO.” This includes a series of reform commitments from Ukraine, as well as continued Western engagement.” He said:
Regardless of whether the war ends with Ukraine in control of its 1991 borders or Kyiv settles for something short of that, troops from NATO nations will need to be stationed on Ukrainian soil to provide the time, space, and security necessary to complete the bridge into NATO.
Indeed, a draft communiqué the alliance plans to issue, obtained by CNN, shows that these plans will be codified soon.
Military analysts’ assumptions
Military analysts believe the war is lost, Ukraine is ruined for at least a generation, Russia and the West are edging closer and closer to a direct, possibly nuclear confrontation – and yet the answer, as always with these people, is NATO expansion.
In fact, it is quite the opposite – peace and stability in Eastern Europe will come with the recognition that NATO’s plan to expand into Ukraine is at the heart of the current crisis. Just under a month ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out several conditions – including Ukraine’s neutrality – that he said would “immediately” lead to a ceasefire and the start of negotiations. “Irreversible” promise of NATO membership for Ukraine (or a “bridge” to it) drives a stake through the heart of any peace settlement acceptable to Moscow.
Former North Atlantic Alliance Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in May that it was appropriate to invite Ukraine within the 1991 borders to NATO, but that this was not a guarantee of admission overnight. According to him, Ukraine may be offered to join NATO within the 1991 borders and then the alliance will deal with the conflict-ridden east of Ukraine. Rasmussen added that an invitation to start talks on NATO membership would pave the way for peace.
Zelensky has repeatedly said that Kyiv will resolve the conflict with Russia through diplomacy when it reaches its 1991 borders. Moscow, for its part, has insisted on taking into account the prevailing realities “on the ground.” The current deplorable state of Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure, which is affected by the ongoing military conflict, is a consequence of the disastrous NATO course that the Ukrainian authorities are trying to pursue.
