New Steps to Support Ukraine
Ivan Sichen
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian-fascist troops are regrouping their forces, drawing up reserves and preparing to start a new stage of offensive operations on Ukrainian territory.
In view of this, Ukraine needs additional assistance from its Western partners to reliably repulse the next attack of the enemy. And by and large – to protect Europe from the invasion of Putin’s horde. We have already written about this in the previous article “The West’s Support for Ukraine. What Else Can Be Done?” Most of the mentioned in it is already implemented in practice. And the assistance to Ukraine from the USA, NATO and the EU is really coming out to a qualitatively new level.
In the above-mentioned article, among the most important directions of the West’s support, which needs Ukraine, we mentioned the possibility of US and NATO’s distracting Moscow’s forces from our state by intensifying their military activity in other important for Russia directions. At last, this is happening in practice.
For example, March 14, 2022, Cold Response 2022 – a large-scale military exercise – began in Norway with the participation of about 30 thousand servicemen from the Alliance’s 27 member countries and partners, as well as 200 aircrafts and 50 warships. It is significant that in the exercise participates Finland, which directly borders Leningrad region of Russia, and the length of the Finnish-Russian border is 1.3 thousand kilometers.
The peculiarity of the exercise is the involvement of two carrier strike groups, namely – American and British ones, led by aircraft carriers USS Harry S. Truman and HMS Prince of Wales, respectively. The carrier strike group of the US Navy also includes a guided-missile cruiser – USS San Jacinto, and guided-missile destroyers – USS Cole, USS Bainbridge, USS Gravely and USS Jason Dunham. Besides, the United States transferred to the air base Ørland in Norway four B-1B Lancer strategic bombers, and at the air base Andøya – a squadron of anti-submarine aircrafts P-8 Poseidon.
The official aim of the exercise is to practice a deployment of the NATO’s Rapid Response Forces to threatened areas in the event of a crisis, as well as their operational strengthening of NATO’s forces by the deployment of additional troops.
However, given the peculiarities of the current situation caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine, the real goals of the exercise may be to resolve the task of repulsing the Putin’s regime’s possible attack on NATO, as well as deterring and distracting Moscow’s forces from Ukraine.
Evidence of this is the conduct of exercise in northern Norway (near Narvik) close to the border with Russia and 500 km from Murmansk. At this, practical actions of NATO warships in the Barents Sea are not excluded, and this is a most irritating factor for Moscow. This is already a powerful factor that can force Russia to return to the North and North-West directions units of the Northern Fleet and the 6th Army of the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces, which are now operating near the Ukrainian Kharkiv.
Besides, last week the US leadership warned Russia about NATO’s readiness to respond with all its might to any aggressive action against member countries of the Alliance (even if at least one shot is fired on their territory). According to US National Security Adviser J. Sullivan, such Russia’s ’s steps will force NATO to trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on collective defense.
In fact, this was the US’ response to Moscow’s threats to destroy convoys of weapons sent by NATO to Ukraine, as well as the shelling of the Yavoriv training ground, which is located 20 km from the border with Poland. And in order to strengthen the US position, two additional Patriot missile defense systems were redeployed in Poland.
Also, a special team was set up in the Pentagon’s office of Acquisition and Sustainment to meet the growing demand for American weapons after the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine. First of all, this applies to the European allies of the United States, which are expanding the volume of purchases of American weapons both for their own needs and for their transfer to Ukraine. The tasks of the team are: coordination of arms supplies and overcoming bureaucratic obstacles related to its sales; assessment of the production capacity of the American defense industry; detection and elimination of obstacles in the transportation of military products to consumers. The group works closely with the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees the sale and transfer of weapons to other countries.
According to US President J. Biden, Washington will continue to work closely with allies and partners to help the Ukrainian people defend their nation. Plans to expand arms supplies to Ukraine have also been voiced in the United Kingdom. In turn, Poland still does not rule out the possibility of transferring MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.
Finally, the United States is stepping up cooperation with China to make it put pressure on Russia to force it to end the war against Ukraine. In particular, this issue was discussed during a meeting between US National Security Adviser J. Sullivan and a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the China’s Communist Party Yang Jiechi on March 14, 2022, in Italy. At this, the United States severely warned China about the inadmissibility of providing military and economic assistance to Russia to continue hostilities on Ukrainian territory.
Thus, despite the fact that the United States and NATO have so far refrained from direct military confrontation with Russia (including refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory), they are steadily increasing support for Ukraine in the military sphere. However, one way or another, the West is gradually getting involved in the war with Russia on the side of Ukraine.
We don’t like making predictions, but this may happen in full in the near future. Especially since Russian UAVs are already flying over NATO member states. For example, March 14, 2022, the fact of crossing the state border of Ukraine in the direction of Poland by the Russian UAV Forpost was recorded. On the same day, the Russian Orlan-10 UAV crashed in Romania.
