The New York Times said that America and Europe are racing against time to get tons of weapons into the hands of Ukrainian forces while their supply routes are still open. It is an operation reminiscent of the Berlin Airlift - the famous race by the Western Allies to keep West Berlin stocked with the essentials in 1948 and 1949 when the Soviet Union sought to strangle it - and is unfolding across Europe. In less than a week, the United States and NATO pushed More than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, crossed the borders of Poland and Romania to be transported overland to Kyiv and other major cities. So far, Russian forces have been so busy in other parts of the country that they have not targeted the arms supply lines, but few think that can continue. But these are only the most visible contributions. In addition, there are forces from the US Cyber Command known as "electronic dispatch teams" at bases across Eastern Europe, interfering with attacks and Russian digital communications — but measuring their success rate is difficult, officials say. In Washington and Germany, intelligence officials are racing to combine satellite imagery with Electronic intercepts of Russian military units, that information is stripped of any indications of how it was collected and sent to Ukrainian military units within an hour or two. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was also provided with encrypted communications equipment to make secure calls with President Biden, as he did on Saturday night on a call about what America can do in its efforts to keep Ukraine alive without engaging in direct combat on the ground, in the air or in cyberspace with Russian forces. with assistance so far, but he repeated his criticism publicly - that the assistance was largely sufficient change for the task ahead. He demanded a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the closure of all Russian energy exports and new supplies of combat aircraft. Biden's crew at the National Security Council spent most of last Saturday trying to find a way to move a fleet of used Soviet MIG-29 fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine, as Ukrainian pilots are trained on them. . But the deal hinges on Poland giving F-16s, in return, a process further complicated by the fact that many of those fighter jets were promised to Taiwan - where the United States has greater strategic interests. Ukraine and whether doing so would make them a new target for the Russians. The United States says it is open to the idea of exchanging planes. On Sunday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on a trip to Moldova, another non-NATO country that US officials fear might be next on Russian President Vladimir Putin's list of countries he wants to return to Moscow's orbit: I cannot speak of a timetable, but I can only tell you that we are looking at the matter very closely.” The current effort is, in many ways, more complex than the Berlin airlift three-quarters of a century ago. West Berlin was a small area with direct air access. Ukraine is a sprawling country of 44 million people, from which Biden withdrew all U.S. forces in an attempt to avoid becoming "combatants" in the war. Conflict is increasingly likely. Especially since US legal definitions of what constitutes going to war are not their own, as a senior US national security official warned. On Saturday, Putin warned that any country's attempt to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine would be considered "an armed conflict." On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement warning NATO countries such as Romania against allowing their bases to be used as a safe haven for the remaining aircraft in the Ukrainian Air Force. And if they did, she added, "any subsequent use against the Russian armed forces could be considered the involvement of these countries in an armed conflict."
Read also: Beijing offers to mediate between Moscow and Kiev..a warning of the expansion of the war To understand the speed of the arms transfers currently underway, a comparison can be made between a US $60 million arms package for Ukraine that America announced last August and was not completed until November. But when the president approved $350 million in military aid on February 26 — nearly six times as much — 70 percent of it was delivered within five days. The officials said speed was deemed necessary because the equipment — including anti-tank weapons — had to pass through western Ukraine before Russian air and ground forces could begin attacking the shipments. As Russia seizes more territory inside the country, the distribution of weapons to Ukrainian forces is expected to become more difficult. Within 48 hours of Biden agreeing to transfer weapons from US military stockpiles, the first shipments, largely from Germany, were arriving at airports near the border. "The window for doing easy things to help the Ukrainians has closed," said Maj. Gen. Michael Ribas, the former commander of US special operations forces in Europe. US officials say Ukrainian commanders have told them that US and other allied weapons are making a difference on the battlefield. Several times in the past week, Pentagon officials said, Ukrainian soldiers armed with Javelin anti-tank missiles have attacked a mile-long convoy of Russian armored vehicles and supply trucks, helping to halt the Russian ground advance pressing on Kyiv. Another weapon provided by a NATO member state, Turkey's Bayraktar TB2 drones, has also been used to hunt down Russian tanks and other vehicles. "We have all been greatly impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have used the equipment that they provided," said Telora Cooper, senior Russian policy official at the Pentagon. We gave it to them.. Kremlin monitors were surprised by this too, how they slowed the Russian advance and they performed very well on the battlefield,” even the elements who joined the Ukrainian army in the early days of the war. A senior Pentagon official said that the bad weather in northern Ukraine stopped some Russian attack planes and helicopters. Officials said many Russian vehicles that veered off main roads to avoid the stalled convoy got stuck in the mud, making them more vulnerable to attack. But US intelligence also has its limitations. Biden's ground rules ban surveillance planes from flying over Ukraine, so they have to stare across the border, as surveillance is often conducted over North Korea. There is a reliance on new, small satellites - providing imagery similar to those provided by commercial companies such as Maxar and Planet Labs. One curious feature of the conflict so far is that it includes a whole gamut of ancient and modern warfare tactics. The trenches dug by Ukrainian soldiers in the south and east look like scenes from 1914. Russian tanks crossing cities hark back to Budapest in 1956. But today's battle, which most strategists predicted, would mark the early days of the war - over the computer networks, power grids, and communications systems that controlled them. It has barely begun. US officials say this is partly due to the extensive work that was done to strengthen Ukraine's grids after Russian attacks on its electrical grid in 2015 and 2016. But experts say this is not a complete explanation. Perhaps the Russians didn't try hard at first, or keep their assets in reserve. Perhaps the US-led counterattack - part of what General Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, calls the "continuous no" doctrine in global networks - explains at least some of the absence. In recent days, from an operations center in Kyiv to a center outside the country, are some of the most secretive elements in the conflict. But it is clear that the cyber dispatch teams have tracked some familiar targets, including the activities of the GRU, to try to neutralize their activity. Microsoft helped, release patches within hours to eliminate malware it detects on normal systems.
All this is new territory when it comes to the question of whether the United States is a "fighter". Through the American interpretation of the laws of cyber conflict, the United States can temporarily cut off Russian capability without taking action of war, but a permanent cut is more problematic. But as experts acknowledge, when a Russian electronic system collapses, Russian units do not know whether it is temporary or permanent, or even whether the United States is responsible for that failure. Likewise, sharing intelligence is risky. US officials are convinced that the Ukrainian military and intelligence services are full of Russian spies, so they are careful not to distribute raw intelligence that reveals its sources. They say they are not passing on specific intelligence that would tell Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets. The concern is that doing so would give Russia an excuse to say it is fighting the United States or NATO, not Ukraine. Ukraine receives lobbying, public relations and legal assistance for free — and it pays off. Zelensky called members of Congress on Saturday, calling for tougher sanctions against Russia and urging certain types of weapons and other types of support. Lobbyists who have received their salaries from the Ukrainian energy industry and the nonprofit civil society group, but now work for free. But American lobbyists are a sensitive topic in Ukraine, after Paul Manafort, President Trump's later campaign chairman, worked for a pro-Russian president who was ousted in 2020, After Trump tried to provide military assistance to Kyiv based on its willingness to help find out what owes then-candidate Biden and his son Hunter.