Western officials now say that Ukraine’s fate hangs in the balance, despite the $61bn aid package finally agreed upon by the US House of Representatives, which has now passed into law.

The situation at the front is extremely grave. Any delay at all in getting this aid to Ukraine means it will likely lose the war by Christmas.

Ukrainian generals warn that their defenses might collapse under the pressure of a Russian army that has exceeded Western expectations in its capacity and ability to remobilize manpower and industry. Once again, on April 22 the Ukrainians were forced back by a Russian army that boasts a 10:1 advantage in artillery alone.

Moreover, China is supporting Russia’s military in its biggest expansion since the Soviet era, while North Korea and Iran are also significantly contributing to the regeneration of the Kremlin’s military capability.

It is no surprise therefore that Russian land forces are still advancing, while Ukraine’s entire energy infrastructure is being pulverized (an estimated 60% of generating capacity has been destroyed.)

Yet, it is also noteworthy that after the recent Russian attacks on the Ukrainian electricity power grid, Europe has managed to organize extra Patriot missiles to Kyiv, signifying its growing resolve. Although the news of US aid is good news and will help boost Ukrainian morale, the performance of Putin’s army has exceeded Western expectations for several reasons.

First, Russia has reconstituted its army faster than anticipated. Its war economy is close to full mobilization, with factories across the country delivering much more military hardware to the frontline.

This means that Ukraine and the West are actually confronting a de facto hostile alliance of these powers and that — as US Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Christopher Cavoli testified — Europe is under systematic attack.

Next, the repercussions of this war are global in scope and thus transcend Europe. At the same time many NATO member governments and the alliance itself are now warning, correctly in our view, that to be fully protected and be granted a promising future, Ukraine must enter NATO soon and probably the European Union (EU) too.

For this to happen, Ukraine must first halt this summer’s Russian offensive without additional losses of national territory. Only then, and only if Ukraine is truly confident about its chances, should it launch a counteroffensive in late 2024 or early 2025.

In our view, it is of paramount importance that the Ukrainians act with a great sense of caution and realism, because if its much-desired counteroffensive fails then there is a high risk of being crushed by Putin’s regime — remember that Russia has a 4:1 demographic advantage.

Such a Russian victory would place all of Central and Eastern Europe at risk. We should recall that Putin’s December 2021 demands, just before the all-out war was launched, demanded that the US and its allies remove all troops and infrastructure from the NATO states that joined after 1997.

Could the West resist if faced with a victorious Russia? Much depends on whether in the event of Ukrainian defeat, it had been able to rearm and so face down his imperialistic ambitions.

It would be far better not to find out. It is therefore imperative that we sustain Ukraine militarily, politically, and economically. Moreover, in sustaining Ukraine we must also defend Europe and the international order — vital interests not only for European governments but also for the US, which has fought three wars (the last being the Cold War) to establish peace, security, and a lawful order in Europe and abroad.

What, then, must be done? Beyond sending Ukraine the weapons it needs and has requested, the administration must come off the fence and repudiate its past equivocation with a full-throated commitment to Ukraine’s independence and the recovery of its territorial integrity, i.e. complete victory.

In doing so, the US and NATO must go beyond merely a regular and consistent supply of the weapons Ukraine needs, and also commit to the broader task for which NATO was established. In other words, all of NATO’s 32 member states must make a serious, long-term commitment to conventional deterrence along the entire frontier from the Arctic to the Black Sea. Doing so will restore the balance broken by Russia, and negate the Kremlin’s efforts to dominate the escalation process and freely threaten nuclear weapons based upon its conviction of NATO’s essential irresolution.

The instruments and capacity to do this are available. Western leaders should also think more creatively about how to assist Ukraine, e.g. helping it restore freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, which Russia has curtailed.

Likewise, something resembling the World War II lend-lease program could be revived, especially as it was brought back in 2022-23, and unaccountably (and wrongly) allowed to expire.

At the same time, the US and Europe need governmental leaders to articulate forthrightly to their publics that the peace may fail, with all that entails. Rather than surrender the public square to the revived isolationist literature that frankly does not care about Ukraine or European security and that emulates the blinkered pre-World War II literature asking “Pourquoi mourir pour Danzig?” (or Why die for Danzig?), when the real question was, Why die for Paris or London?

Ensuring Ukraine’s victory and European security, for the two are also interlinked, must entail credible and effective security for Ukraine. Of course, NATO’s expansion to Ukraine will cause Russia to scream and shout, but its long history of breaking every arms control treaty since 1990, along with eight treaties with or involving Ukraine, means it carries very little weight.

Lastly, the West must also address the economics of this war. This means rebuilding the US and European defense industrial sectors as fast as possible — and much faster than hitherto — while removing loopholes to make sanctions on Russia more stringent, especially for its enablers, principally China.

In other words, the current drift must end and a truly multi-dimensional strategy be agreed. The precondition for this policy is a collective recovery of nerve, or more plainly, courage.

President Macron, who now advocates a resolute strategy, rightly labeled his opponents as cowards. This may be impolitic, but it is not inaccurate.

Shakespeare memorably wrote “when the blast of war is in your ears, imitate the action of a tiger.”

The method of restoring security for the US and Europe is clear enough. The question remains, who will lead the charge, and who has the stature and clarity of vision to meet the moment? Their hour has now come.

Source: CEPA

When Ukrainian Patriot missile air defenses repeatedly shoot down the Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, a missile the Kremlin describes with Wunderwaffe– (wonder-weapon) like terminology, it is not just saving its military and civilians from the damage the enemy seeks to cause.

It is also doing the hard work for the US and the rest of NATO, their defense industries, and other friendly nations. It provides the ultimate test range.

That’s because Patriots — Ukraine’s only defense against ballistic missiles — and multiple other weapons systems are being trialed against a near-peer rival in real time. For all the improvements in computer modeling, the real battlefield remains unmatchable.

Think of it like baseball, or cricket. Training an air defense system is like throwing balls again and again. Over time, the algorithm learns what the pitcher/bowler can do and works out the best response for the batter. The more balls/missiles are thrown at you, the better you know how to respond. Ukraine has provided knowledge we didn’t have.

All modern Western weapon systems either collect data by default or can be made to. This allows near-realtime improvements and increases the success rate.

For the Patriot, multiple calculations are made to intercept an incoming Kh-47M2 Kinzhal. It’s a tough task. The long-range missile may reach Mach 10 during its flight and is designed to weave an unpredictable course (by comparison, a regular assault rifle bullet leaves the barrel at about Mach 3 but slows down after a few hundred meters.)

The good news is that while the Kremlin likes to call it hypersonic, it has to slow considerably near its target. The Patriot’s job is to calculate when and where its air defense missile should intercept the threat.

Even so, the margins for error are incredibly slim at these velocities, and there is no second chance (The New York Times has a good account here.) Achieving this requires perfection at many levels; that’s why quite a lot of Kinzhals still get through. In addition, Ukraine has only two Patriot systems, which means it cannot provide anything like nationwide coverage.

When the Ukrainians do successfully intercept a Russian missile, the data is fed back into the Patriot missiles intercept algorithm, teaching the air defense system to become better and better over time.

Likewise data on downing modern Russian aircraft; the Patriot system destroyed three advanced SU-34s on December 23, and was again believed to be responsible for the destruction of a Russian command and control aircraft in Southern Ukraine on January 14.

Why is the data so beneficial for NATO and its defense industries? Data quality is high because it is live-tested; it is not a desk job or theoretical calculation. As an added value, other adversaries have copied or bought Russian designs, so data from Ukraine would improve the air defense against Chinese, Iranian, and other rogue state missiles and airplanes.

Intercept success rates are increasingly crucial as the Russian leadership has repeatedly threatened nuclear war if there is a conflict with NATO. It has also threatened to invade and erase the Baltic states and other areas after completing the Ukrainian war.

Remember the Kinzhal missile is designed to carry a tactical nuclear warhead. Shooting them down is an existential issue.

A Russian campaign against the Baltics would be a force-on-force war against NATO.

Let’s say the success intercept rate for the Patriot batteries is 90% without the live data from Ukraine’s successful intercepts and 97% after using it to improve and fine-tune the system.

If Russia launches 20 nuclear-armed Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, then without the Ukrainian data and fine-tuning, two nuclear missiles will penetrate the air defenses and detonate over their NATO targets.

Such advances also create deep uncertainty for Russian generals. In the early 21st century, NATO officers would have viewed a 50%-60% intercept race as a significant success based on data from the Gulf War. Updates since then have increased the system’s effectiveness.

Ukraine’s live testing greatly increases this and creates headaches for our enemies. They will have to ask — will a tactical nuclear strike succeed, and how complete might that success be?

It should therefore be clear that providing Ukraine with Patriots, or any advanced air defense system, is an investment in the provider’s defense. The data offers a high defense return on investment, as the improved algorithm upgrades its existing systems, and the knowledge gained provides an excellent data source for the development of next-generation air defense systems.

The war in Ukraine generates system-borne combat experience for NATO forces because the data is shared, and improves the combat effectiveness and readiness of these friendly units.

All this without a single soldier entering the fight.

Source: CEPA

Russia’s stepped-up aerial war of aggression continues to kill Ukrainians with no link to the military; basketball coaches, primary school teachers, mothers and fathers, and children in their beds.

On December 29, an extraordinary aerial barrage — the war’s biggest to date — launched 158 weapons against the standard range of military and in-no-way military targets in Ukraine. At least 31 died.

The following day, Russia said that Ukrainian drones had struck near the Russian city of Belgorod. The Kremlin claimed there were as many as 21 dead. Since then, there have been almost-nightly aerial strikes against Ukraine, as there were last winter, using hundreds of missiles. The campaign has been enormous in scope and intensity. They reduce whatever happened in Belgorod to a blip.

Yet many Western media explained that Moscow’s attacks after December 30 represented “retaliation” or a rise in “cross-border attacks” following the raid (see here, here, here, and here.)

Major names in the news should know better, just as they should have known better than to offer similar reporting after Ukrainian attacks on military infrastructure in Crimea. This is notable — after all, CNN, NBC, and the Daily Telegraph cannot reasonably be considered Russian agents of influence.

It’s worth asking why news media employed this absurd language and, what’s more, made no attempt to verify the allegations (there are numerous analysts who would have told them it was nonsensical.) Later, it transpired that at least some of the damage may have resulted from Russian missile failures over its own territory.

Regardless, the misreporting is a distortion of the facts typical of Russian propaganda. Ever the opportunist, Putin immediately picked up on this, claiming that his forces were only launching attacks against military targets in Ukraine.

Everyone is familiar with this lie: the only reality is that Ukraine is defending itself against deliberate, massive Russian attacks with no military objective, which has caused the deaths of multiple thousands of Ukrainian civilians. It is already clear that Russia has been stockpiling weaponry to rain on Ukraine this winter even as the US and European Union (EU) stall $110bn in aid to the country.

Let us be clear — Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is quite explicit on this point: an attacked state has the right to strike military objectives, including logistical elements used for aggressive purposes, on enemy territory. We should add that the allies of this attacked country have the same right, either to supply lethal weapons for Ukraine to strike deep into this territory or to intervene themselves.

The other reality is that when Ukraine has struck Russian territory, it has only ever targeted military infrastructure. Even if they had caused civilian casualties, these are considered collateral victims under international law. Ukrainian victims are not.

There are two other reasons why this nonsensical story was picked up by journalists, without even using the conditional tense with regard to the supposed Ukrainian strikes against civilians in Belgorod.

The first is that, with rare exceptions, the allies have largely failed to emphasize Ukraine’s absolute right to strike the enemy. In fact, they belatedly did so afterwards, at a Security Council meeting convened by Russia, with robust positions taken by the Czech Republic, which was absurdly implicated by Russia, and which refused to take part in this masquerade, as well as by the United Kingdom, Japan, and France.

The second, and even more worrying, reason is that some of Kyiv’s allies, including the United States, have expressed their strong reluctance to allow Ukraine to strike on Russian territory — indeed, at the start of the war, it was virtually forbidden.

Now, however, the allied strategy must be precisely the opposite. If we want Ukraine to win and Russia to be totally defeated, military strategists agree that the only way to win is to strike deep into the enemy’s military structure.

The relative failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive this summer and fall can largely be explained by the fact that the allies did not supply Ukraine with sufficient long-range weapons, or that their range was deliberately limited.

Not only was Kyiv’s ammunition insufficient, but launching an offensive using only tanks and infantry — which, incidentally, are fewer in number than promised — was likely to fail. Russia can only be defeated by the massive presence of combat aircraft. Although Ukrainian pilots are now being trained, none of the promised F-16s have been handed to Ukraine and none are being directly provided by the US.

Military aid is now more vital than ever. North Korea and Iran are supplying longer-range weapons in greater number than the limited supplies of the French Scalp/British Storm Shadow and the tiny number of American ATACMS (only around 20 seem to have arrived, whereas the US could easily supply 300 without depleting its stocks.)

If we want to disorganize the Russian armed forces and their entire logistical apparatus, there must be strikes far behind the lines. This is also important in terms of psychological warfare against Russia: many Russians, especially in the western part of the country, don’t see the war up close. As the saying goes, it hasn’t yet entered their kitchen.

Sanctions are certainly hitting the middle class — and much has been made of Russians’ concerns with their lack of eggs rather than the 370,000 Russian casualties of war — but still far too little. Ukrainian strikes on military infrastructure close to home would have a completely different impact on the population.

It’s high time that the democracies halted attempts to halt or limit Ukrainian strikes on Russia (remember the head-shaking in Washington over Ukraine’s drone attack on the Kremlin in May?), and made a 180-degree turn.

In the face of the Kremlin’s war of aggression, our own war aims must incorporate a strategy of massive strikes on Russian bases and logistics.

But this begs the question — do we really want to win? We’re in a zero-sum game: victory will either belong to Ukraine, and therefore the West, or Russia. There is no middle way.

Source: CEPA

In one sense, it is strange this discussion even needs to be held. It’s clear that Russia’s war of aggression was unprovoked and that its behavior routinely contravenes the laws of war.

It’s clear that Ukraine is the injured party and will need vast sums to expel the aggressor and get back on its feet. And it’s clear, from precedents such as Iraq’s war of annihilation against Kuwait in 1990-91, that the aggressor pays. (Iraq’s final reparations payment was made in 2022 for a total of $52.4bn.)

So the issue is not in question, but there are nonetheless numerous arguments made against this program, mostly of a financial and political character.

Let me explain why these are wrong. Very seriously wrong.

The first fear is that authoritarian states will pull assets from Western jurisdictions if the West moves to seize and allocate Russian assets to Ukraine,

Nonsense. The anxious autocrat, carefully watching the debate unfold, would already have made his or her decision. Why wait, when a freeze could be imposed at any moment?

Authoritarian regimes intent on similar aggressive acts have already pulled at-risk assets from Western jurisdictions. So the decision to use Putin’s money for Ukraine will not surprise anyone. Nor would it be entirely negative — the signal would be sent that if you attack your neighbors, your money will go the same way as Russia’s. It will end up in the hands of the victim.

Second, some of the West’s companies, banks, and lawyers argue that Russia will engage in tit-for-tat seizures of Western commercial assets in Russia. I have news for them — the Kremlin is already looting Western assets in its jurisdiction, forcing sales at often knock-down prices to the regime or to the Kremlin’s friends. The regime’s behavior has already been described as a “flagrant violation of investor property rights.” Putin has already pulled the trigger.

Further, Western companies who invested in Russia in recent years did so despite clear warnings. They made exceptionally bad business calls. It is not the responsibility of Western governments to bail them out.

Third, the sovereign immunity argument has already been overridden in other cases, most recently in the case of Saddam Hussein’s regime (see above.) In addition, the lawyer and former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow, and others, have made a good case around the countermeasures argument by arguing that sovereign immunity lapses where the state acts against international law, as Russia clearly has.

But even if there were some force in any of the above arguments, those opposed to asset seizure should be asked — how do you plan to find the $100bn a year currently needed to bankroll Ukraine’s war efforts and its subsequent recovery needs over the next decade?

And what if the money is not found, what are the consequences and longer-term costs?

The fact that around $110bn of Ukraine funding is now stuck either in the US Congress or the European Union underlines the political challenges of getting Western taxpayers to sign off for big checks to foreign recipients. Voters are suffering tough cost of living pressures and it’s reasonable to think of their needs too.  Asking them to pay further hundreds of billions — perhaps $1 trillion — needed for Ukraine is probably requiring too much. And why should they when Russia can be made to pay?

At the heart of this debate is the unalterable fact that a defeat for Ukraine would be disastrous for the Western alliance.

Military defeat might see Russian tanks back up on NATO’s borders — the armored vehicles currently being destroyed en masse by Ukrainian forces near Avdiivka could move more than 1,000km (630 miles) westwards to the borders of Poland, the Baltic states, and Slovakia.

That’s not all. Ukraine’s now very potent military-industrial complex would be added to Russian capabilities, and increase the threat to the West.

Nor would it be reasonable to help Ukraine win the war but then see recovery and reconstruction fail because of inadequate funding. That would risk social and political instability in Ukraine; the high expectations of 1 million-plus demobilized troops will be disappointed, and they will be angry.

Either scenario risks huge migrant flows out of Ukraine to Western Europe and the need for NATO to spend even more money on security and defense. It also risks fanning the fires of populism within NATO countries, and raise the specter of political instability and fragmentation in the alliance. 

It is easy, and lazy, to list the excuses why we should not act. Such arguments have bolstered the West’s feeble foreign policy of the past 20 years. Such arguments have brought us to this difficult and potentially disastrous situation today.

In the end Ukraine’s victory in war and, as importantly, the peace must be NATO’s central security project since the collapse of communism in the late 1980s.

Needs must. We cannot fail. Handing Putin’s billions to Ukraine (however, it’s done) is a happy marriage of the legal and the practical. There is simply no alternative.

Source: CEPA

The best defense is supposed to be a good offense. But in Russia’s war against Ukraine, the best defense seems to be defense itself.

Visions of decisive breakthroughs have faded as both Russia and Ukraine have seen their offensives stymied. The war has degenerated into a stalemate punctuated by bloody attacks that result in modest gains at best.

That’s frustrating for Ukraine and the Russian invaders, but NATO can rejoice. For a defensive alliance that was conceived to keep Europeans from fratricide and Russia from invading Europe, anything that makes the attacker’s job harder is a good thing.

Facing a massive Warsaw Pact army, hair-trigger poised for attack at all costs, Western planners in 1948 or 1978 could only have dreamed of the current tilt toward defense. In particular, the omnipresence of drones has made maneuver and surprise – key ingredients for many a decisive victory – extremely difficult.

Massing armor and artillery for a sudden blitzkrieg becomes a nightmare when hordes of cheap UAVs can spot any movement, call in GPS-guided missiles and artillery, or detonate themselves against a tank or howitzer. Footage from Russia’s costly fall offensive in Avdiivka illustrates the point — advancing is extremely expensive in men and materiel.

Whether Ukraine had the resources and skill to conduct its much-anticipated mechanized counteroffensive is debatable. But it’s also arguable that a NATO army would have had equal difficulty in penetrating dense Russian minefields and multiple trench lines, backed by artillery, attack helicopters, and gaggles of drones.

Russia has also struggled to find offensive success. In the first days of the invasion, its armored columns driving toward Kyiv were decimated by Ukrainian anti-tank missiles and drones. Both sides have since shrunk their ambitions, opting for small-scale attacks to wear down the enemy.

Ukraine and Russia haven’t forsaken mobile warfare out of nostalgia for the bloody World War I battlefields of the Somme and Passchendaele. But if the defense is dominant, then nibbling “bite and hold” attacks and attrition tactics become a practical alternative.

Drones and smart bombs can also benefit the attacker, of course. As German panzer divisions learned in Normandy, paralyzing a defender’s maneuver and logistics can produce catastrophic results. But in the end, it is the attacker who must break from cover and camouflage, and advance beyond the protection of anti-air and anti-drone defenses. The attacker should have a three-to-one superiority, says the traditional formula. New technologies may increase that ratio.

This has more serious implications for Russia than for NATO. Russia is the revisionist power that seeks to undo the post-1945 and post-1989 order. If Putin intends to restore the Russian empire by force of arms, then he must take the offensive.

The current imbalance will change. The question isn’t if, but when. The stalemate in Ukraine is often compared to World War I. Nations sent their armies into massive battles in 1914, confident in the supremacy of attack, until trenches and machine guns imposed unsustainable costs.

Yet the deadlock was ultimately unlocked by new technologies and techniques, including the Allied invention and deployment of tanks, as well as German “stormtroopers” using infiltration tactics. Finding a solution to trench warfare took four years and much bloodshed: despite deploying thousands of tanks, the Allies took a million casualties in their final Hundred Days offensive in late 1918. But eventually, the offense triumphed.

The real question is whether the Russo-Ukraine stalemate reflects a general trend toward defensive dominance, or if the conflict is unique. All wars have their idiosyncrasies, but the Russo-Ukraine War is stranger than fiction: suicide battalions of Russian convicts, Ukraine’s bizarre menagerie of Western equipment, and mix-and-match “frankenweapons.”

Soviet-style Kursk-like fortifications are unlikely to be the norm on most battlefields, and there is no guarantee that combat in the Suwalki Gap or the Golan Heights will resemble Bakhmut and Donets. Armies may perform better than Russia’s early bumbling offensives, or Ukraine’s clumsy counterattack. And with 1,600 miles of border to defend, NATO might find it difficult to concentrate enough forces for a solid defensive line.

Nonetheless, current developments seem to favor the defense. That’s good news for NATO, even if it delivers no reassurance to Ukraine.

Source: CEPA

NATO’s policy on Ukraine is inadvertently encouraging Putin to continue the war. It is time for a change.

The alliance’s position thus far has affirmed that Ukraine will become a member in the long run, but not while Russia continues its war on Ukraine. NATO is concerned that Ukraine’s admission would trigger a direct and immediate NATO war with Kremlin forces, and that this might escalate to nuclear weapons use.

This view is a fallacy, and it sends a signal to Vladimir Putin that he should continue fighting. As long as he keeps going, NATO will not admit Ukraine as a member, and thus Putin believes that he still has a chance of winning.

NATO must send the opposite message: that no matter what he does, Putin will never succeed in defeating Ukraine. Continuing the war would therefore be pointless and devastating for Russia. Moving forward with Ukrainian membership in NATO will send this message.

This message is also crucial for Ukraine’s economic recovery. There is a symbiosis between military and economic support for Ukraine. For example, there is no greater economic benefit to Ukraine than opening its ports to normal shipping. Yet that can only be achieved through military security operations, such as demining, and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. Moreover, investors will not place big bets on Ukraine unless they are sure it will be a secure country in the future.

If security measures can help Ukraine achieve GDP growth of $25bn, this would be enough to produce a $5bn windfall for the state budget, thus alleviating the need for Western budgetary support.

What are the fallacies in the current NATO approach? Firstly, NATO’s Article 5 does not establish any specific requirement that Western ground troops must fight on the front lines against Russian forces.

Paragraph 1 of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty reads as follows:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently, they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in the exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

In other words, there will be a collective response to any aggression against a NATO member, but the treaty does not specify what that collective response will be. It does not state that NATO members must send troops to the front line, although that is certainly a possibility.

One should recall that NATO members have been involved in many conflicts over the past 70 years, from Algeria to Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya, and yet Article 5 was not invoked, and NATO as an alliance did not join the fight.

The only time Article 5 has been invoked in NATO’s entire history was in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. And yet, in this case, NATO’s Article 5 response was not to send troops to fight terrorists.

Instead, NATO countries sent aircraft to assist the United States by conducting air policing missions in US airspace. When the United States ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan, it did so together with UK, Australian and Polish forces as a coalition of the willing. There was no NATO role. Indeed, it was several months after a UN-authorized peacekeeping mission had been established in Afghanistan (ISAF) that NATO took on any role there – and that role was not an Article 5 commitment.

In other words, Article 5 is not an automatic tripwire for the use of ground forces. It might be — for example, if the Baltic states, with their small territories and population, were attacked by Russia. In that case, NATO countries would indeed have to intervene directly under Article 5, including with ground troops, to counter Russia (something already apparent from the NATO battlegroups present in all three.) There are no other options. But that is a matter for the North Atlantic Council to decide at the time, based on the circumstances.

In Ukraine, a vast country with a large population, there are multiple options beyond the immediate use of NATO ground forces.

The second fallacy is to assume that Vladimir Putin could escalate the war in Ukraine if he wanted, but he is refraining from doing so because NATO has not offered membership to Ukraine. This is far from the truth.

If Putin had an option to escalate conventionally in Ukraine, he would already have done so. The reality is that he has lost half of Russia’s conventional forces fighting Ukraine, and cannot now reconstitute them. He relies on Iran and North Korea for drones and outdated artillery shells and sends untrained troops to the front as cannon fodder, simply to keep the war going.

As for horizontal escalation — i.e., attacking a current NATO member — this is the last thing Putin would do, as he knows it would draw an immediate alliance response directly against Russian forces.

As for nuclear escalation, Putin knows – and even more importantly, the Russian military knows – that any nuclear use would not achieve any military objective in Ukraine, while it would certainly draw a direct response against Russian forces. It would also spark universal condemnation of Russia, including from China and other non-Western states.

The idea that NATO membership is the trigger for Putin’s aggression is a third fallacy: Ukraine had little chance of NATO membership when Putin attacked in 2014 and 2022. Moreover, Russia has existing borders with alliance territory in Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the United States, and has not attacked. When Finland became a NATO member this year (soon to be joined by Sweden), Russia barely took notice. The issue for Putin is not NATO membership, but the existence of Ukraine as a nation-state.

So what would Article 5 mean in practice for Ukraine?

There are a number of ways in which the alliance can act collectively to defend Ukraine, many of which the allies are already doing. They are providing massive amounts of equipment to Ukraine, as well as providing training, finance, logistics, intelligence, operational planning, and more. This is already significant.

Some NATO nations, including the United States, have decided to help Ukraine acquire and use F-16 aircraft. This is a significant, long-term commitment to the future of Ukraine. Given the substantial logistics, maintenance, training and infrastructure requirements of a successful F-16 program, this is just the kind of signal Putin needs to see in order to come to grips with the fact that he will not defeat Ukraine.

The European Union’s decision to open accession talks with Ukraine also sends a significant signal to Putin that there is no scenario ahead in which he wins. Ukraine is a part of the European family and will survive and prosper as a sovereign, independent European democracy.

Yet NATO could still do more under Article 5 than it is currently doing. Four things come immediately to mind:

Maritime Demining: Western NATO nations could deploy or transfer mine-hunting vessels (especially unmanned vessels) to NATO members with a Black Sea coastline, as well as to Ukraine. The aim would be to create a demining regime in the Black Sea in the territorial waters of Ukraine (subordinate, of course, to Ukrainian defensive needs) as well as the territorial waters of NATO allies, and the vast international waters of the Black Sea where such floating mines are a danger to international shipping.
Freedom of Navigation: NATO allies — both Black Sea littoral states and other members with significant naval capabilities — should establish a mission to support freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. Any physical threat to the safety of third-party vessels operating in international waters in the Black Sea is unacceptable — just as it is unacceptable in the South China Sea or the Mediterranean. There is no implied threat to Russia or any other country that also operates in the Black Sea — only a promise to defend the right of any international vessels to use international waters in the Black Sea freely.
No Limits on Particular Systems: Despite the massive US and allied support for Ukraine over the past 18 months, there has been a sliding set of restrictions on Western military aid. Initially, it was Stinger missiles. Then it was armor, artillery, aircraft, tanks, longer-range artillery, and so forth. And there remain significant restrictions on the types of systems the United States and NATO allies will provide. Of particular importance would be the longest range (300km) of US artillery systems, naval vessels, long-range missiles, and other types of aircraft, such as the A-10 ground attack plane. None of these systems should be off-limits.
Participation in Air Defense for Humanitarian Purposes: NATO allies are already doing a significant amount to assist Ukrainian air defense, including providing a vast arsenal of layered air defense systems that are serving to protect civilians and infrastructure. Russian forces, however, continue to attack civilians and infrastructure with drones and missiles, launched from Russian territory, and occupied Ukrainian territory. Many of these attacks are close enough to threaten existing NATO Allies such as Romania.
It is significant that Russian forces are unable to make ground advances. Russia’s only reliable military tactic is to target Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. NATO nations could agree to participate directly in Ukraine’s air defense to protect Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. This might involve a combination of air defense systems stationed on NATO territory and the deployment of alliance air defense capabilities in western Ukraine and in NATO territory near Ukraine to protect Ukrainian civilians — as well as potential impacts on NATO territory — from Russian bombardment. At a minimum, it should be possible to keep Ukraine west of the Dnipro River (including Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv) safe from Russian attacks.

These four steps – and perhaps others – could therefore become NATO’s Article 5 commitment to Ukraine – discussed and agreed within the NATO-Ukraine Council. It must not rule out the provision of ground troops at a later date if needed — but there is no need to commit such troops today. Putin must know that escalation is on our side, even if we choose not to escalate.

Note that such a formula does not set territorial limits on the application of Article 5. To do so would relegate Russian-occupied territory to a long-term occupied status. Rather, it defines specifically the type of response NATO will provide under Article 5, without accepting any limits on NATO’s support for Ukraine recovering its 1991 borders.

In this context, we should recall that NATO admitted West Germany as a member when East Germany was still under Soviet occupation and that the EU accepted Cyprus as a member, even though northern Cyprus was under Turkish control..

Now let us suppose NATO were to take these four concrete steps to defend Ukraine as soon as possible – even without Ukrainian membership. It would make a significant difference in Ukraine’s success in the war effort, and in its future as a European democracy.

But even more important, if NATO took these steps today — without any formal declaration about Ukrainian NATO membership — it would not evoke any Russian response beyond what Russia is already doing. Indeed, it would expose Russia’s bluff that such steps, or indeed NATO membership itself, are some kind of red line.

Once these measures were implemented, however, the alliance would have then solved the potentially contentious issue of what Article 5 would mean in practice. Since there would be no mystery about what Article 5 would mean (we would already be doing it), and also no mystery about Russia’s response would be (we would have already seen it), we should be able to move ahead with alacrity to invite Ukraine into NATO.

The path would be clear for a membership invitation at NATO’s Washington Summit in July 2024. Ratification should also be on a fast track — in the case of the United States, before the January 2025 Presidential Inauguration.

Indeed, America’s 2024 Presidential election adds a yet greater sense of urgency to the discussion. With the outcome completely unknown, it may be too difficult to advance Ukraine’s NATO membership after the election. Yet America’s and Europe’s security depends on a secure Ukraine that defeats Russia. This provides all the more reason to act swiftly to bring Ukraine into our great alliance.

Ambassador Kurt Volker is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. A leading expert in US foreign and national security policy, he served as US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017-2019, and as US Ambassador to NATO from 2008-2009. 

Source: CEPA

Since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion, Ukraine has applied AI on the battlefield, to document the war, and to defend itself against Russian cyber and information warfare.

On the battlefield, autonomous Ukrainian drones, both military and civilian, identify and strike Russian targets. AI automates take-off and landing, as well as targeting. In October, a mass Ukrainian drone attack deployed 16 uncrewed aerial vehicles and surface vessels to damage Russian ships in the port of Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea.

These drones are increasingly home-made: about 200 Ukrainian companies manufacture drones for the military and the government is determined to further boost domestic production. Makeshift FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones, assembled from imported components, are cheap and efficient. It costs as little as $400 to make one capable of destroying a Russian tank worth millions, Ukrainian experts say.

AI analyzes satellite and drone imagery, social media images, and intelligence information to create a multi-layered picture of the situation on the ground. These ‘Google Maps for the military’ help Ukrainian military commanders make informed decisions.

In the documentation of war, AI’s role is considerable. AI-powered facial recognition software allows Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and journalists to identify Russian war criminals. Satellite images document Russian war crimes, such as mass killings of civilians in Bucha and Mariupol, and prove that Russian officials’ repeated denials of them are lies.

AI is even planning Ukraine’s reconstruction. A Ukrainian company ReThink trained AI recognizes construction materials in damaged buildings in Bucha, based on open source data and drone images. This information allows the government to plan the most efficient way to rebuild. AI helps determine the areas mined by Russians.

The Ukrainian government and independent media leverage AI to confront Russian propaganda. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized an exhibition titled “Living in War” at the German Bundestag. Ukrainian media outlets such as Texty visualize the war’s impact, creating an interactive map of destruction showing Russian strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Sometimes, AI-generated imagery has turned out to be controversial. Ukraine’s Parliament had to delete a tweet about a Russian missile attack on the city of Dnipro earlier this year, which was accompanied by an AI-generated image of a wounded boy. Such use of AI damages the credibility of information coming from Ukrainian official sources.

AI can be a double-edged sword: Russia uses it to generate and automate the distribution of misleading content. A 2022 deep fake video of President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on Ukrainians to surrender. It failed to convince Ukrainians, but experts warn that Russian AI is improving.

Despite these dangers, Ukrainians rely on new technology in their information war against Russia. Ukrainian startups such as LetsData, Osavul, and Mantis Analytics, analyze large volumes of social media data. Their goal is to identify Kremlin-linked networks and track disinformation narratives. AI offers them an opportunity to respond proactively, do pre-bunking, and, for the government, organize preventive information campaigns.

Cyber defense technologies shared with Ukraine by its Western partners and tech companies enable Kyiv to successfully repel most Russian attacks. At least 470 cyberattacks targeted Ukraine over the past year, but their impact was limited.

While the world debates the impact of AI, Ukrainians already see, experience, and, most importantly, use it. While the West has been sharing cutting-edge software, more is needed. In a situation of numerical and resource disparity against Russia, AI is key to Ukraine’s hopes of winning the war.

Olga Tokariuk is a Chatham House Academy fellow, Ukraine Forum, and a non-resident fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Source: CEPA