Defence analyst: No-fly zone a gift for Kremlin

A Nato-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine would be a gift to Vladimir Putin, according to defence analyst Justin Bronk.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has led calls for the West to close the skies above his country but Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defence and security think tank, said it would be a mistake for both political and military reasons.

He told The Sunday Post: “Nato (and the EU) are already doing most of what they can do to help Ukraine, while being careful not to take actions which could lead to direct military confrontation.”

In a blog on the RUSI website, Bronk also said most of the Russian firepower to bombard Ukrainian cities was artillery or missile systems and a no-fly zone would not target these. He warned a no-fly zone would also require Western pilots to deliberately kill, and risk being killed by, Russian military personnel.

He said: “Given Putin’s frustrations about the army’s slow progress, poor performance and heavy losses, and the ruinous sanctions which have been rapidly imposed, the likelihood of dramatic and rapid escalation in response to any Western intervention is high.”

Bronk said: “A NFZ would gift Putin with a retroactive justification for the invasion by giving him the ‘NATO intervention’ which Kremlin propaganda has consistently sought to claim it was pre-empting by invading Ukraine.

“It would give the Russian army a military opponent that could more credibly be used to explain away its heavy losses.”