How NATO and the US Helped to Arm Ukraine in a Race Against Time

On a snow-covered runway at Amari Air Base in northern Estonia on Sunday morning, pallets of rifles, ammunition and other weapons were being loaded onto one of the world’s largest cargo planes, an Antonov AN-124. , belonging to the Ukrainian Air Force. It is a Cold War aircraft, built and purchased when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.

It is now being used against the Russian invasion, as part of a vast airlift that US and European officials describe as a desperate race against time to put tons of weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces while their supply routes are still open.

Scenes like this — reminiscent of the Berlin airlift, the famous Allied race to keep West Berlin stocked with essentials in 1948 and 1949 as the Soviet Union tried to strangle it — are happening across Europe.

In less than a week, the United States and NATO have sent more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, across the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from gigantic military planes so they can travel overland to Kiev, the capital. Ukrainian, and other major cities. So far, Russian forces are so busy in other parts of the country that they are not targeting arms supply lines, but few think it can last.

These are just the most visible contributions. Hidden in bases in eastern Europe, US Cyber ​​Command forces, known as “cybermission teams”, are on hand to interfere with Russian attacks and digital communications. But measuring its success rate is difficult, officials say.

In Washington and Germany, intelligence officers race to merge satellite photographs with electronic intercepts of Russian military units, remove the clues as to how they were obtained, and transmit them to Ukrainian military units within an hour or two.

While trying to stay safe from Russian forces in Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky travels with US-supplied encrypted communications equipment that can put him on a secure link with President Joe Biden. Zelensky used it Saturday night for a 35-minute call with his American counterpart about what else the US can do to keep Ukraine alive without engaging in direct combat on the ground, in the air or in cyberspace with Russian forces.

Zelensky has praised the help so far, but echoed the criticisms he has made in public — that the aid is extremely insufficient for the task. He called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the closure of all Russian energy exports and a new supply of fighter jets.

It’s a delicate balance. On Saturday, while Biden was in Wilmington (Delaware), his National Security Council team spent most of the day trying to find a way for Poland to transfer to Ukraine a fleet of well-used Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots know how to fly.

But the deal hinges on giving Poland, in return, much more capable US-built F-16 fighter jets, an operation made more complicated by the fact that many of those fighter jets are pledged to Taiwan — where the US has greater strategic interests.

Polish leaders said there was no deal and were clearly worried about how they would supply the jets to Ukraine and whether that would make them a new target for the Russians. The US says it is open to the idea of ​​swapping planes.

“I can’t talk about a timetable, but I can just say that we are looking into this very, very actively,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday during a trip that took him to Moldova, another non-member country. of the NATO that US officials fear could be next on the list of nations for Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.

And in central Washington, lobby groups and law firms that once charged the Ukrainian government generously for their services are now working for free, helping the Zelensky government call for more sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainians are also asking for more money for weapons, although they reject the idea that Washington is manipulating Zelensky’s image to present him as a Winston Churchill in a T-shirt, uniting his country for war. Covington & Burling, a leading law firm, filed a pro bono motion on behalf of Ukraine at the International Court of Justice.

In many ways, it’s a more complex effort than the Berlin airlift three-quarters of a century ago. West Berlin was a small territory with direct air access. Ukraine is a sprawling country of 44 million people, from which Biden withdrew all US forces in an attempt to avoid becoming a “co-combatant” in the war, a legal term that indicates the extent to which the US can help Ukraine without being considered in any way. direct conflict with Russia and its nuclear weapons.

A stream of weapons becomes a torrent

To understand the fast-moving nature of the arms transfers underway today, consider the following: A $60 million arms package to Ukraine that the US announced in August was not completed until November, he said. the Pentagon.

But when Biden approved $350 million in military aid on Feb. 26 — nearly six times that amount — 70 percent of that was delivered in five days.

Speed ​​was considered essential, officials said, because equipment, including anti-tank weapons, had to pass through western Ukraine before Russian air and ground forces began attacking the shipments. As Russia occupies more territory in the country, it is expected that it will become increasingly difficult to distribute weapons to Ukrainian troops.

The first such shipments, largely German, were arriving at airfields near the Ukrainian border 48 hours after Biden approved the transfer of weapons from US military stockpiles, officials said.

The military was able to ship these shipments quickly, taking advantage of pre-positioned military stockpiles ready for shipment on Air Force C-17 transport planes and other cargo aircraft, and transporting them to about half a dozen staging bases in neighboring countries, mainly Poland and Romania.

Still, the resupply effort faces major logistical and operational challenges.

“The window for doing easy things to help the Ukrainians has closed,” said Major General Michael Repass, former commander of US Special Operations forces in Europe.

According to US officials, Ukrainian leaders have told them that US and other allied weaponry is making a difference on the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers armed with shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles attacked a mile-long convoy of Russian armor and supply trucks several times last week, helping to stop a Russian ground advance as it approached Kiev, Pentagon officials said.

Some vehicles are being abandoned, officials said, because Russian troops fear sitting in the convoy when fuel tanks are being attacked by Ukrainians, triggering fireballs.

War in cyberspace has barely begun

One of the strange features of the conflict so far is that it includes both ancient and modern varieties of warfare. The trenches dug by Ukrainian soldiers in the south and east look like scenes from 1914. Russian tanks rolling through cities evoke Budapest in 1956. But today’s battle, which for most strategists would mark the early days of the war—over computer networks and electrical and communication systems that they control—it has barely begun.

US officials say this is partly due to the extensive work done to strengthen Ukraine’s grids after Russian attacks on its power grid in 2015 and 2016. But experts say that cannot explain everything. Perhaps the Russians didn’t try very hard at first or are keeping their assets in reserve. Perhaps an American-led counteroffensive — part of what General Paul Nakasone, head of Cyber ​​Command and the National Security Agency, calls the doctrine of “persistent engagement” in global networks — explains at least part of the absence.

Government officials are understandably tight-lipped, saying ongoing cyber operations, which have been moved in recent days from an operations center in Kiev to one outside the country, are some of the most secret elements of the conflict. But it is clear that cybermission teams have tracked some known targets, including the activities of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence operations, to try to neutralize their activity. Microsoft helped, releasing patches within hours to eliminate malware detected on non-sensitive systems.

All of this is new territory when it comes to the question of whether the US is a “co-combatant”. Under the American interpretation of cyber conflict laws, Americans can temporarily disrupt Russian capability without conducting an act of war; permanent disability is more problematic.

But, as experts recognize, when a Russian system goes down, Russian units don’t know whether it’s temporary or permanent, or even whether the US is responsible.

Similarly, sharing intelligence is dangerous. US officials are convinced that Ukraine’s military and intelligence agencies are full of Russian spies, so they are careful not to distribute raw information that would reveal sources. And they say they are not transmitting specific information that tells Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets. The concern is that this gives Russia an excuse to say it is fighting the United States or NATO rather than Ukraine.