The Commercial Appeal

Western arms pour into Ukraine

Russia has yet to slow shipments from US, allies

- Robert Burns

WASHINGTON – Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped blunt Russia’s initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the approachin­g, potentiall­y decisive, battle for Ukraine’s contested Donbas region. Yet the Russian military is making little headway halting what has become a historic arms express.

The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals.

The Biden administra­tion is preparing yet another, more diverse, package of military support possibly totaling $750 million to be announced in the coming days, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. The additional aid is a sign that the administra­tion intends to continue expanding its support for Ukraine’s war effort.

These armaments have helped an under-gunned Ukrainian military defy prediction­s that it would be quickly overrun by Russia. They explain in part why Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army gave up, at least for now, its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital, and has narrowed its focus to battling for eastern and southern Ukraine.

U.S. officials and analysts offer numerous explanatio­ns for why the Russians have had so little success interdicti­ng Western arms moving overland from neighborin­g countries, including Poland.

Among the likely reasons: Russia’s failure to win full control of Ukraine’s skies has limited its use of air power. Also, the Russians have struggled to deliver weapons and supplies to their own troops in Ukraine.

Some say Moscow’s problem begins at home.

“The short answer to the question is that they are an epically incompeten­t army badly led from the very top,” said James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who was the top NATO commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013.

The Russians also face practical obstacles. Robert G. Bell, a longtime NATO official and now a professor at the Sam Nunn School of Internatio­nal Affairs at Georgia Tech University, said the shipments lend themselves to being hidden or disguised in ways that can make them elusive to the Russians – “short of having a network of espionage on the scene” to pinpoint the convoys’ movements.

“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of internatio­nal and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transporte­d in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.

“So the Russians have to find the

needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”

Even with this Western assistance it’s uncertain whether Ukraine will ultimately prevail against a bigger Russian force.

The Biden administra­tion has drawn the line at committing U.S. troops to the fight.

It has opted instead to orchestrat­e internatio­nal condemnati­on and economic sanctions, provide intelligen­ce informatio­n, bolster NATO’S eastern flank to deter a wider war with Russia and donate weapons.

In mid-march, a Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said arms shipments would be targeted.

“We warned the United States that pumping weapons into Ukraine from a number of countries as it has orchestrat­ed isn’t just a dangerous move but an action that turns the respective convoys into legitimate targets,” he said in televised remarks.

But thus far the Russians appear not to have put a high priority on arms interdicti­on, perhaps because their air force is leery of flying into Ukraine’s air defenses to search out and attack supply convoys on the move. They have struck fixed sites like arms depots and fuel storage locations, but to limited effect.

On Monday, the Russians said they destroyed four S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers that had been given to Ukraine by an unspecified European country. Slovakia, a NATO member that shares a border with Ukraine, donated just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said long-range missiles were used to hit two Ukrainian ammo depots.

As the fighting intensifies in the Donbas and perhaps along the coastal corridor to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Putin may feel compelled to strike harder at the arms pipeline, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called vital to his nation’s survival.

In the meantime, a staggering volume and range of war materiel is arriving almost daily.

“The scope and speed of our support to meeting Ukraine’s defense needs are unpreceden­ted in modern times,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

He said the approximat­ely $2.5 billion in weapons and other material that has been offered to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administra­tion is equivalent to more than half of Ukraine’s normal defense budget.

One example: The Pentagon says it has provided more than 5,000 Javelin missiles, which are among the world’s most effective weapons against tanks and other armored vehicles – and can even take down a low-flying helicopter.

The missile, shaped like a clunky dumb bell and weighing 50 pounds, is fired by an individual soldier; from its launch tube it flies up at a steep angle and descends directly onto its target in what its known as a curveball shot – hitting the top of a tank where its armor is weakest.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that an unspecified number of additional Javelins are to be delivered by Thursday, and the U.S. will complete the delivery of 100 armed Switchblad­e “kamikaze” drones this week.

 ?? VADIM GHIRDA/AP, FILE ?? A Ukrainian serviceman fires an NLAW anti-tank weapon during an exercise in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 15.
VADIM GHIRDA/AP, FILE A Ukrainian serviceman fires an NLAW anti-tank weapon during an exercise in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 15.

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