We welcome the news that the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon have proposed to the White House a plan to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty by providing lethal weapons.
The possession by Ukraine of anti-armor projectiles like Javelin missiles and anti-aircraft weapons would significantly raise the stakes for Moscow, which already has more tanks in the easternmost Donbas than all the tanks found in Western Europe. The Kremlin’s trampling of Ukrainian sovereignty – already in its fourth year – would then come at an ever higher cost to the aggressor.
Arguments by Russia that the provision of defensive weapons will only “escalate” the Donbas war ignore the fact that Moscow has ramped up the war against Ukraine at each stage. This includes Russia’s provision of anti-aircraft weapons to its proxies that have eventually sealed off airspace after numerous Ukrainian jets and helicopters have been shot down. Also, since 2013 Russia has added formations of three armies adjacent to Ukraine, including two new ones, according to Dr. Phillip Karber of the Potomac Foundation. “Three divisions were also moved near Ukraine’s border, which has included 20 regiments/brigades (17 new) on Ukraine’s border,” he told The Ukrainian Weekly.
Let’s not forget the Russian-supplied Buk missile that shot down the MH17 passenger airliner, which tragically killed all 298 people on board on July 17, 2014. Or the Moscow-supplied arms, armor, artillery, manpower and training of collaborators in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s escalation of the war – when Kyiv forces were on the verge of cutting off the main highway arteries between Luhansk and Donetsk – led to the battle of Ilovaisk in August 2014, when regular Russian army divisions were sent to stave off Ukraine’s successful summer offensive.
Massive cross-border shelling from Russia of Ukrainian positions in 2014 preceded the battle that led to Ukraine losing control of 450 kilometers of its eastern border with its belligerent neighbor.
Next came the battle of Debaltseve, a key rail transportation hub in Donetsk Oblast that Russia also took over with regular forces just days after the so-called Minsk II peace agreement was brokered in Belarus on February 11, 2015. That ceasefire has yet to take hold because Russia continues to escalate the war. Last month, in fact, Ukraine had the highest monthly casualties since June 2016, losing 24 soldiers.
This only illustrates what military experts say is Moscow’s advantage of having “escalation dominance.” Whatever Ukraine does, Russia can match it and maintain superiority through its more advanced military.
Ukraine is obviously paying a high price for turning toward the West and embracing values based on democracy and civil liberties, while turning away from backward Russia, whose leadership offers no vision for the future. Russia, after all, is a country that never soberly confronted its totalitarian and criminal past, one that fabricates myths of times long gone, and one that constantly destabilizes its neighbors with military intervention.
Ukraine, which has been fighting courageously to preserve its independence, deserves to have its military capability improved so that it can successfully battle invading Russian-and Russian-led forces. Should Moscow decide to alter its narrative of the Ukraine “conflict” being a “civil war” and escalate its military adventurism into something well beyond that, Ukraine would sorely need anti-aircraft missiles.
Moreover, a Russian invasion from other directions is always a threat, whether from Russian-occupied Crimea, from the northeast via Chernihiv or Sumy oblasts, or even from Belarus, north of Ukraine. Indeed, Russia plans to engage 100,000 troops in a training operation at the end of this summer called operation Zapad (West). Some 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers will be stationed in Belarus alone, and Kyiv’s military leadership fears that not only personnel, but equipment and other military resources, will stay there after the September operation.
Without lethal weapons, Ukraine’s soldiers will be stuck with the training they got from the American military that taught them how to halt armored vehicles by laying traps of wire that go into the treads of tracked vehicles. Sure, Ukraine has its homegrown Stuhna anti-tank weapon, but it’s technologically inferior to the Javelin. But that’s not the point.
Russia responds only to force. Ukraine has proven to be a resilient opponent. With more advanced weaponry, Kyiv might force Moscow leader Vladimir Putin to alter his calculus ahead of an election year and before he hosts next year’s quadrennial World Cup soccer tournament as more Russians needlessly come home in more body bags.
Ukraine is the frontline to Europe’s security. Moscow has already severed 7 percent of its territory. More advanced weapons will help Ukraine defend the rest of its territory from a war-mongering state bent on not letting Ukraine choose its Western path away from its former ruler and colonizer.