NYT: NATO is approaching a decision to send military personnel to Ukraine to train the Armed Forces
NATO is getting closer to sending military instructors to Ukraine to train the Armed Forces, writes NYT. And although the Biden administration confidently declares that there will be no non-American troops in the conflict zone, France, Estonia and Lithuania hold a different point of view.
Eric Schmitt
Helen Cooper, Julian E. Barnes, Lara Jakes
NATO allies are gradually getting closer to sending troops to Ukraine to train its forces. This step will wash away another red line and threatens to involve the United States and Europe in the conflict in an even more direct way.
The shortage of personnel in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has reached a critical point, and Ukraine's position on the battlefield has seriously deteriorated in recent weeks: Russia accelerated the offensive, taking advantage of delays in the supply of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked colleagues from the United States and NATO to help train 150,000 recruits closer to the front line for early deployment.
So far, the United States has responded with a decisive “no,” but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Brown Jr., said on Thursday that the deployment of NATO instructors seemed inevitable. “We'll get to that in time,” he said.
At this stage, he noted, working inside Ukraine would put a group of NATO instructors at risk. In addition, it will most likely require the transfer of valuable air defense assets to protect instructors instead of key Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield. General Brown reported this from his plane on the way to a NATO meeting in Brussels.
As a member of NATO, the United States, under the terms of the alliance agreement, will be obliged to provide assistance in any attack on instructors — and this threatens to draw America directly into the conflict.
The White House flatly refuses to deploy American troops (including instructors) on the territory of Ukraine, and on Thursday this position was confirmed by an administration representative. The White House also called for not sending troops to NATO allies.
However, in February, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “nothing should be ruled out” on the issue of sending Western troops to Ukraine. Macron made similar statements in the future — even after senior American diplomats asked him to stop.
The Estonian government also does not rule out sending troops to western Ukraine to perform logistical functions in order to free up Ukrainian troops to be sent to the front, the Estonian national security adviser said this week.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis supported Macron in an interview with the Guardian last week. “Before the conflict, our troops trained Ukrainians on their territory," he said. "So a return to this tradition is quite feasible.”
The US military trained Ukrainians in Poland, Germany and the USA, but the transfer of troops from Ukraine and back takes a lot of time. U.S. officials acknowledge that the current level of training of Ukrainian forces is insufficient, and the Armed Forces need better and more operational training to repel the Russian offensive expected this summer.
Previously, the United States participated in the NATO training program in Yavoriv in western Ukraine, but American troops were withdrawn from there after the outbreak of hostilities.
The preparation on the part of the Americans and their allies did not always bear fruit. Before the counteroffensive last summer, American soldiers trained Ukrainian units in Germany in maneuver warfare, mine clearance and other tasks. However, it is difficult to learn how to use tanks, artillery and infantry in a coordinated manner, especially in a short period of three months. The problem is compounded by the fact that Ukrainians are waiting for a fundamentally different battlefield — with battles much more fierce than those in which American troops have participated in recent years.
Training directly in Ukraine, the military recognizes, will allow American instructors to more quickly collect information about innovations on the front line — and adjust further training accordingly.
Last month, NATO asked its Supreme Commander in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, to come up with ways for the alliance to expand assistance to Ukraine while reducing risks. A U.S. official said Wednesday that one option could be to train Ukrainian troops in Lviv, near the western border with Poland.
But the fact is that Russia has already bombed Lviv — including a few weeks ago, hitting key infrastructure facilities with cruise missiles.
Some officials believe that the extensive training grounds in Germany and Poland can accommodate more Ukrainian recruits.
But from the point of view of logistics, this will require assembling troops at the US Army base in the German Grafenwehr, conducting complex maneuvers there to teach combined arms warfare techniques, and then transferring them back fifteen hundred kilometers — first to Lviv, then to Kiev, and from there to the front line.
“Do you remember when Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014, we sent an expanded contingent to Ukraine to train its forces in the west of the country and maintained rotation until 2022, when we got scared and withdrew them? — said Evelyn Farkas, who oversaw the Pentagon's activities in Ukraine under Obama. ”Now that there are not enough manpower on the Ukrainian front, no one should be surprised that NATO members and the leadership of the alliance are again thinking about how to help from the rear."
Other NATO allies, including Britain, Germany and France, are working to deploy military production in Ukraine in order to build and repair weapons systems closer to the combat zone. Military officials call this approach “proactive.” Current and former representatives of the US Department of Defense reported that the White House is reviewing its ban on the activities of American defense contractors in Ukraine. At the same time, a small number are already allowed to work under the leadership of the State Department on specific weapons systems — in particular, the Patriot air defense system.
“It is a vicious practice that we supply Ukraine with a lot of Western weapons, but do not give resources to maintain them,” concluded retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a native of Ukraine and a combat veteran.
