BY MICHAEL WASIURA IN ODESA, UKRAINE
Last week's NATO Summit in Vilnius did not offer a clear path to Ukrainian membership in the alliance, let alone a formal invitation to join the collective security bloc. However, this does not mean that the Ukrainian delegation returned from the Lithuanian capital empty-handed.
On July 12, the final day of the summit, the G7 countries—the United States, Canada, the U.K. France, Germany, Italy, and Japan—issued a formal statement outlining their "unwavering commitment to the strategic objective of a free, independent, democratic, and sovereign Ukraine." The group also promised to ensure the creation of "a sustainable force capable of defending Ukraine now and deterring Russian aggression in the future." Ten additional European countries, including new NATO member Finland and soon-to-be NATO member Sweden, signed onto the pledge.
Notably, while the G7 document contains three instances of the phrase "security commitments" and two of the phrase "security assistance," the word "guarantee" does not appear in any context. The wording suggests that regardless of the instruments the signatories to the pledge might eventually employ, they are considering something less than the provision of foreign active-duty military personnel to a war that is set to enter its eighteenth month of fighting this coming Monday.
"No one should have in their mind some scenario in which tens of thousands of American soldiers have to stream into Ukraine," Fred Kagan, an American Enterprise Scholar and an affiliate of the Institute for the Study of War, told Newsweek. "Ukraine does not need boots on the ground, and Ukraine has not asked for boots on the ground. The Ukrainians have lots of guys in boots, and they are very good soldiers."
However, Ukraine is still very much in need of modern weapons systems, ammunition, armored vehicles and communications equipment, plus the training and maintenance support to integrate them into the ongoing battle. Until the current war ends, any Western country's promise of "security commitments" to Ukraine will therefore likely be limited to the continued provision of these limited forms of aid.
"The Ukrainians need the West to commit to providing material support at a higher level and for a longer period than the West might like," Kagan said, noting that, despite having already delivered over $100 billion worth of military and humanitarian assistance, donor countries have been reluctant to offer Kyiv the full range of weapons system it would need in order drive Russian occupying forces from Ukrainian territory as quickly as possible.
"The main reason why the counteroffensive has been forced to move so slowly is because we have constrained the Ukrainians to fight without air superiority, without adequate air defenses for their frontline troops or their cities, and without the kinds of strike capabilities that we've provided to many of our other allies, including to the Afghans and Iraqis," he explained.
Western hesitancy to provide Ukraine with the tools it needs in order bring a swift, decisive end to the war have raised questions as to the level of commitment implied by the recent G7 statement.
"If we really want Ukraine to win, we need to do ten times more than what we're doing in terms of direct military aid, in technical and maintenance assistance, and also in training programs," Jonas Ohman, head of the Lithuanian NGO Blue/Yellow, which has been delivering non-lethal military aid to frontline Ukrainian units since 2014, told Newsweek.
"What we're doing is ensuring that Ukraine does not lose," he explained, "but the question remains as to whether the United States and NATO truly want Ukraine to win this war, or whether they fear the potential consequences of political chaos in Russia more than they oppose the continuation of the fighting in Ukraine, potentially for years to come."
Ohman's frequent trips to the front over the past nine years, along with his first-hand understanding of the Ukrainian military's strengths and weaknesses, have led him to an assessment that is largely in line with Kagan's: in order to win the current war and to guarantee its long-term security, Ukraine does not need Western commitments to station tens of thousands of troops on Ukrainian soil; rather, it requires the type of training and assistance that will allow its battle-hardened fighters to conduct operations at a scale Kyiv's forces have not yet mastered.
"As a fighting force, a Ukrainian battalion [typically around 500 soldiers] is probably superior to a standard NATO battalion," Ohman explained. "But without integration into a larger system that includes airpower, long range artillery, logistics support, and maintenance, those battalions cannot assemble the necessary mass to actually push Russian forces off of the battlefield."
"Guaranteeing Ukraine's security isn't about signing a piece of paper saying that 'when everyone is ready for it, Ukraine will be able to join NATO,'" he added. "It's about demonstrating a willingness to commit to decades of training and interaction aimed at integrating Ukraine with the West and the West with Ukraine."
One cause for skepticism in Kyiv toward any paper pledge is Ukraine's past experience with similar promises. In 1994, independent Ukraine's first post-Soviet president, Leonid Kravchuk, signed the Budapest Memorandum, which sent all Soviet-era nuclear warheads still present on Ukrainian soil back to Russia in exchange for "security assurances" from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia.
By placing their respective signatures on the document, the three U.N. Security Council permanent members committed to "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine." However, this security "assurance" did not prevent Russia from illegally annexing Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March 2014, nor from invading the Ukrainian Donbas region in April of that same year.
"After our experience with the Budapest Memorandum, a lot of people in Ukraine are going to be very skeptical about any promised security guarantees that do not obligate our partners to come directly to Ukraine's defense in the case of further Russian aggression," Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies, told Newsweek. "There is the credible fear that we will be told, 'The West has helped you enough; don't dare to ask about Article V.'"
But despite the hesitancy of Western states to provide Ukraine with its full shopping list of modern weapons systems, let alone with the types of foreign active-duty personnel capable of integrating them into Ukraine's counteroffensive push, Kagan remains optimistic that Kyiv's forces will eventually succeed in driving Russian troops out of most or all of the territory they currently illegally occupy, including Crimea. If and when that moment arrives, Western states will then have to decide how best to deter Russia from ever attempting to repeat its attacks.
"The primary reason why Western states would see it in their interest to extend a fully-fledged security guarantee to Ukraine would be to deter another Russian invasion and thereby ensure that there will not be another major war in Europe," Kagan said. "That was the purpose of the NATO alliance, and it was successful."
Even without granting Ukraine full NATO membership, however, it is possible that some NATO states could band together to form a fighting force capable of convincing any future Russian leader that another war with Ukraine is not worth the cost to the Kremlin.
"I wouldn't take off the table the prospect that a coalition of states short of the full NATO alliance would give Ukraine full, meaningful guarantees that they would physically intervene in response to a future Russian attack," Kagan noted. "But even without that kind of robust commitment, after Putin, I think it's going to be a very long time before any Russian leader convinces himself of the idea that Ukrainians will not fight back against an invasion."
In Ukraine itself, however, anything short of an Article V guarantee may be seen as an unreliable mechanism for deterring future Russian aggression, even after Vladimir Putin is, inevitably, no longer in the Kremlin.
"Putin has demonstrated that he respects the NATO alliance's commitment to Article V," the Ukrainian analyst Bieleskov said. "Despite the fact that everyone agrees that it would be very difficult for NATO to defend the Baltic states from a Russian attack, Putin has never credibly threatened to trigger Article V there. In the face of public calls from his foreign policy so-called 'experts,' he has also refrained from conducting strikes on logistical hubs delivering military aid from Poland to Ukraine."
The recent history between Russia and Ukraine suggests that, no matter how many modern weapons systems the West ships to Kyiv, and no matter how many Ukrainian battalions undergo training courses in Germany or the U.K., nothing short of a full security "guarantee" will be enough to allow Ukrainians to live in peace.
For nearly eight years leading up to the start of Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian forces had been demonstrating that they were willing and able to fend off attacks from Russian-backed militias and Russian active duty units fighting in the Donbas. Despite that fresh history, the Kremlin leadership somehow still saw Kyiv as a ripe military target.
"Whatever capabilities Ukraine had prior to February 24, they were not enough to persuade a dictator not to invade," Bielieskov said. "It is very difficult to persuade a dictator, which is why, once the war is over and Ukraine's control over its borders is secure, an Article V guarantee will be the clearest demonstration to Russia that they have nothing to gain by going to war with Ukraine ever again."