Global Courant
While some $137 billion in military and financial aid to Ukraine remained tied up in Washington and Brussels, individual European allies began making bilateral commitments worth billions to ensure Ukraine’s continued ability to resist Russia this year.
That resistance continued over the past week, with ground forces holding a 1,000 km (621 mi) line against Russian attacks in what their commander called an “active defense,” and the Ukrainian air force seizing an opportunity to become one of only a handful Russian reconnaissance aircraft.
Ukraine destroyed the Beriev A-50 somewhere over the Sea of Azov on Monday, killing the entire crew, its commander-in-chief said. An Ilyushin-22 command aircraft was also effectively destroyed, although it managed to land. Ukraine’s southern command said it was one of only three such aircraft operational and assisted in direct missile strikes.
Russia had fired forty drones and missiles into Ukraine two days earlier. Ukrainian defenders shot down eight rockets and said they had disabled another 20 with electronic jamming. As if to prove its missile prowess after the downing of the A-50, Russia attacked again on Wednesday, wounding 17 people in central Kharkiv.
(Al Jazeera)
The events in the air were perhaps the most kinetic in a week of static frontlines. Ukrainian ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskiy said his forces were in “active defense” as Russia pushed for full control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the recapture of Kharkov and Kherson.
“Our goals remain unchanged: to hold our positions … to exhaust the enemy by inflicting maximum losses,” Syrskiy said.
Syrskiy’s comments appeared to confirm that Russia had initiated the attack. “The initiative lies entirely in the hands of the Russian armed forces,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with local government leaders on Tuesday. “If this continues, the Ukrainian state could suffer an irreparable, very serious blow,” Putin said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to these comments the next day when he addressed the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, saying Putin would never give up his maximalist goals in Ukraine.
“If we have to fight Putin together years in advance, isn’t it better to end him now, while our brave men and women are already doing so? They are the opportunity for the world,” Zelenskyy said.
Rearmament
As the two leaders’ defiant positions signaled another year of bitter war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza and the Red Sea continued, rearmament became an issue for both Europe and Ukraine.
“We need a war transformation of NATO,” said the head of the Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, as he opened a two-day meeting of defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.
NATO members lived in “an era in which anything can happen at any time, an era in which we must expect the unexpected, an era in which we must focus on effectiveness to be fully effective,” he said.
This thinking was also reflected in the European Commission.
(Al Jazeera)
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said last week that he would propose a 100 billion euro ($109 billion) European defense investment program next month to expand capacity in Europe’s defense industries.
Last March, the EU pledged one million artillery shells to Ukraine within one year. By November they had delivered less than a third of that, but Breton confirmed they would fulfill their promise early this year, and the European Commission confirmed that EU production capacity would reach one million shells per year by early this year, equivalent to US production. capacity.
Russian grenade production capacity was equivalent to that of the US and EU combined, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence Vadym Skibitskyi said. Russia’s secret mobilization had also mobilized half a million troops last year, meaning the country could have overcome the war of attrition by fielding 462,000 soldiers in Ukraine.
Given these Russian capabilities, rearmament of Ukraine was an urgent matter, Zelensky said.
About $61 billion in aid for 2024 remained stuck in Congress’ deliberations in Washington due to Republican opposition, and two packages of 50 billion euros and 20 billion euros ($54 billion to $22 billion) remained stuck in Brussels due to Hungarian opposition.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US has suspended security assistance to Ukraine as a result of the standoff.
In Europe, individual countries chose to make progress bilaterally.
(Al Jazeera)
Estonian President Alar Karis said last week that Estonia would provide 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in aid, including howitzers and ammunition, over the next four years. Estonia would spend 0.25 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on Ukrainian defense over the next four years, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas had said days earlier.
Estonia, a close ally of Ukraine that also shares a border with Russia, said last November it was increasing defense spending to 3 percent of GDP and urged other European countries to double their spending.
Latvia pledged howitzers, grenades, drones and helicopters on the same day.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed an agreement with Kiev to help develop Ukraine’s drone production capacity, and said he would spend $3.2 billion on Ukraine’s defense this year.
French President Emmanuel Macron was expected to make his own pledges in Kiev next month. He told a news conference that long-range SCALP missiles would be included in defense deliveries already underway. “We will provide much more equipment and help Ukraine with what it needs to defend its airspace,” he said.
Germany said last month it would double its military aid to Ukraine to eight billion euros ($9 billion) by 2024.
“The Russian war in Ukraine is disappearing from the mainstream as a political issue and is now largely a concern for those on Europe’s eastern border,” the European Council on Foreign Relations said.
Although Russia still had sufficient resources, it was not without its problems.
Skibitskyi said it is having trouble building certain types of missiles because of sanctions. And Russia’s secret recruitment of naturalized citizens – believed to have begun in 2023 – may have contributed to a massive fire that destroyed a seven-acre warehouse of online retailer Wildberries in St. Petersburg last week.
Russian sources said the fire was preceded by a fight among migrant workers there, and a raid by authorities who pressured workers to join the army.
(Al Jazeera)
