The core European allies like Germany, France and the Nordic powers are now taking the lead in support for Ukraine – and their semi-detached European partners Spain, Italy and the UK will be required to help, too, however reluctantly.
This week Estonia demanded a meeting of Nato’s parliament, the North Atlantic Council, to discuss how their allies might help in their defence. This came in the wake of the incursion of three MiG-31 supersonic fighter-bombers into their airspace on 19 September. Just before the council met, Copenhagen and Oslo national airports had been closed for several hours after three large military drones were spotted over Denmark, and two over a Norwegian airbase.
Russia has denied malicious intent. Their various spokespeople tried to exclude that the drones downed in Poland and the aircraft tracked in Estonian airspace were Russian at all.
I doubt that anything Trump did or said at the UN changes this. Moscow knows that the Trump weathervane’s swing towards Kyiv, is likely to swing their way again soon.
He would like to have his version of a Roman triumph in Red Square – to show that Russia’s place as lead European power has been restored, and that whatever the sacrifice it is worth the great Russian people indulging Putin’s vision of martial glory.
Moldova’s President Maia Sandu has accused Moscow of pouring “hundreds of millions of euros” into a campaign to swing the presidential election. “People are intoxicated daily with lies,” she declared. “Hundreds of individuals are paid to provoke disorder, violence and spread fear.”
Time is not on Putin’s side, however, back in the real world of the ground war in Ukraine and a creaking Russian economy. In Ukraine the Russian forces have made some gains, but sustained some big losses, too, with at least 300,000 killed and wounded in action this year alone according to Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Russia’s key frontline target, the city of Pokrovsk to the north-west of Donetsk, has not been taken after 18 months of assaults. Moreover, Ukrainians are still holding pockets of territory inside Russia.
According to some estimates, Russia has lost up to 20 per cent of its oil refining capacity. That, The Economist reports, equates to around a million barrels a day. Petrol queues have been spotted outside St Petersburg and in the Far East.
This rather misses a central point. The major crisis is not in petrol supplies and refineries, but the lack of lubricants for heavy machinery, and for emulsifying diesel fuel in freezing temperatures. As winter arrives, and the flow of oil is stopped by the bombing of pipelines and pumping stations, the pipelines are likely to burst.
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Russia already has more than 700,000 soldiers in Ukraine itself, and well over a million supporting the war effort as a whole. What would the new reserve be for? The dominance of drones and artillery in the combat zone make it almost impossible for infantry to take and hold ground. But to take and hold ground you always need infantry. This is why Pokrovsk hasn’t fallen. A new army won’t change this.
So far, the response of European Nato has been cautious, and some would say timid. Poland has talked of building a “drone wall”. Britain has joined the Eastern Sentry operation of aircraft patrols. Last week two RAF Typhoons flew combat air patrol for four hours over Poland, and returned safely to Lincolnshire.
Currently the RAF has only 17 fully operational Typhoon aircraft. The Royal Navy has only six working Type 23 frigates. Infantry sent for live firing exercises at Otterburn recently had to be sent home because there was no ammunition available. The Army has a mere 17 155mm howitzers.
Robert Fox is a defence expert and war correspondent who has reported from the Falklands, Middle East, Afghanistan and the Balkans
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