The value of an effective air defence system and of unwavering international support was crystal clear the night of Iran’s massive attack on Israel: most Iranian missiles and drones were destroyed before they reached Israeli soil. The US, the UK and France, as well as Jordan, participated in Israel’s defence.
I arrived in Kyiv the following day. The contrast between the two emergencies could not be starker. Unlike Israel, Ukraine lacks sufficient air defences, and the west provides far less than it could or should to defend Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine is not dealing with one-off retaliation for striking a Russian consulate – as Israel is with Iran. Russia has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine since 2014, aimed at eradicating its nationhood.
Daily, Russian missiles and drones pummel Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. A recent missile attack on a power generation plant in the north means that hundreds of thousands, if not a million more Ukrainians could be forced to leave their homes by next winter. Unable to occupy what is an unoccupiable country, Russia has decided it wants to make Ukrainian cities uninhabitable. Already the numbers are horrifying: before Russia’s full-scale land invasion in 2022, Ukraine had a population of around 40 million. Today, just over 20 million live in free Ukraine, and that number could decline further in the months ahead.
Russia is also making headway along the frontline, outmatching Ukraine in terms of artillery and manpower by a staggering 7:1 ratio, if not more. Now that the US House of Representatives has finally passed a long-awaited package of military aid worth $61bn for Ukraine after months of stalling, it could hold the line, perhaps losing some more territory in the Donetsk region. Final sign-off for the bill by Joe Biden is expected within days. In the worst case scenario, 2024 could see the fall of other major cities and towns such as Kharkiv, Sumy or Zaporizhzhia.
Making a state and a society function with a halved population, while fending off an invasion by one of the world’s largest armies, requires unimaginable resilience. From what I could see over the course of a few days in the capital, Kyiv bustles with life. But it is life punctuated by almost daily air-raid sirens.
Along with a group from the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations I was on the way to the train station one day when our app alerts went off. There was no bunker for us to take refuge in, but our taxi driver shrugged, unflustered. There was no point in panicking, he said, we would reach the station soon and perhaps it would be over by then anyway. He was right; no sooner had we reached the station than Luke Skywalker’s voice on our app thundered: “The air alert is over, may the Force be with you.”
For Ukrainians to keep believing the Force is with them is hard enough. Doing so with one hand tied behind their back because of insufficient western support is next to impossible.
In some respects, the west is facing objective difficulty. It took Europe and the US almost two years to wake up to the fact that this would be a long war and that delivering part of their old weapon stocks would be insufficient. For two years (and more), Russia has put its economy on a war footing, while acquiring weapons from North Korea and Iran. The discrepancy in the ratios of artillery and ammunition are a reflection of this. Belatedly, the realisation of a long war has dawned on the west, and arms production is being ramped up: by next year, European governments should be able to compensate for some of the current mismatch. This is why Ukrainians perceive the coming months as their greatest window of vulnerability, perhaps greater than the first dramatic weeks after 24 February 2022.
But in other respects, European countries (and the US) have no excuses. Paradoxically, while lacking enough basic artillery and ammunition, Europe has no shortage of sophisticated air defence systems. There are approximately 100 such systems across Europe collecting dust. Important as the defence goal of deterring some future Russian aggression may be, the European continent is already at war. If European air defence systems continue lying around rather than being provided to Kyiv to save lives in Ukraine, they may end up being needed where they are currently stationed, turning the reasons against their transfer to Ukraine into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ukraine doesn’t need 100 Patriot and SAMP/T air defence systems; it just needs seven. But so far, with the exception of Germany, European countries have balked. They have come up with all sorts of reasons (or excuses), including the need to respect Nato standards. Yet many don’t seem to have the same concern for breaking Nato standards on the target of 2% defence spending. If Germany can agree to send an additional Patriot battery to Ukraine despite having resisted vigorously, other European countries can follow suit. Not doing so now is simply unpardonable.
It is worth asking ourselves what explains this western reticence on Ukraine, especially given the stark contrast with the Middle East. There are two possible answers, neither of which is edifying. The first and bluntest is fear. The west has been pulling its punches in the Russia-Ukraine war because it is scared of Russia and Russian escalation. The more it has manifested its fear, the more it has galvanised Russia. Vladimir Putin smells fear, and like any fighter in a ring he is seizing the opportunity to double down. The Ukraine war has become existential for the Russian regime, and Ukraine’s window of vulnerability may not last for ever. Therefore, best dig the knife in as deep as possible now that the west has immobilised itself in fear.
The second and most tragic reason is that Europe does not yet regard Ukraine as part of itself. As a colleague in Kyiv put it: “Europe still considers us its ‘good other’.” So long as that othering persists, Ukraine’s existence will be in danger, and with it the security of the entire European continent. Showing that Ukraine is part of “us” means sending more of “our” air defences to protect Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. And it means approving Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations framework and holding the first intergovernmental conference opening Ukraine’s accession talks in June.
All this may seem bureaucratic and a low priority for a country struggling for its very survival. But insofar as it signals that Europeans actually treat Ukraine as part of Europe, it is existential. A diplomat stationed in Kyiv told us that when the EU moved to open accession negotiations with Ukraine last December, soldiers on the frontline were jubilant. Strange as it may seem, to them it was not an abstract idea but a tangible signal of belonging, of feeling they were not alone. And in this hour of greatest need, Ukraine needs missiles and munitions as much as a heavy injection of morale. It’s hard not to return from Kyiv at the moment enriched, but with a heavy heart.
Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist
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