Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine war updates, NATO's Washington Summit.
Ukraine war updates.
1) Russia doubling-down on ‘‘meat assaults’’.
According to the UK defense intel agency, Russia has seen over 70k soldiers likely killed or wounded in May and June.
This is the highest casualty rate during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The high rate is partly due to Moscow opening a new front in the Kharkiv region while maintaining pressure along the 620-mile front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, the ministry stated.
But frontline Ukrainian troops are also seeing more intense and desperate hail mary attacks across the frontlines - what they describe as ‘‘meat assaults’’.
What explains this? Why would Russia escalate its desperate attacks so soon after April?
Moscow is most likely trying to capitalize on the small window of opportunity still open - before new Western gear and supplies arrive to prop up Ukraine, and before Ukraine’s mobilization updates (lowering the age to 25 - which at this point should be set at 18).
And in addition to frontline operations, Russia is also lashing out at Ukrainian civilians - continuing to target civilian infrastructure, and the Children’s hospital in Kyiv being the latest high-profile target.
Just when NATO leaders were convening in Washington, Russian bombardment killed at least 38 people.
But for Western provided Patriot and other air-defense SAMs, the death toll would have been much higher: Ukraine managed to intercept and destroy 30/38 missiles launched by Russia.
Russians have of course denied the deliberate targeting of the hospital - blaming it on Ukraine’s own air defense missiles.
And Russians may have succeeded in getting away with this lie, had there not been a 1) video capturing the precise impact of the Kh-101 cruise missile hitting the hospital and 2) wreckage belonging to Kh-101 being found at the location of the hospital.
This evidence is enough to even laypeople to conclude that Russia was behind this deliberate strike.
There was certainly enough evidence for the The UN Human Rights monitoring Agency in Ukraine (HRMMU) to conclude that this was a direct hit.
Furthermore, it isn’t like this is a one-off: Russia has a long history of striking not only civilian energy infrastructure but also malls and hospitals in Ukraine.
And it was Putin himself who (in March of this year) boasted that: “We can hit civilian infrastructure and all other facilities. We have our views on this, and our plans.”
2) Poland - Ukraine Security Agreement.
Yet another major security agreement between Ukraine and a powerful NATO ally.
Ukraine now has 20 of these bilateral security agreements in place.
What is notable here, is that Ukraine's deputy parliament speaker called on Poland to consider using its air defenses to protect Ukrainian airspace near the Polish border.
The request was made during a meeting on July 6 in Vilnius between parliamentary representatives from Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania.
And as far as we know, Poland is yet to say no..
If this did take place, if Poland was to shoot down Russian missiles (their fighter jets don’t travel that far, and usually fire missiles from Russia’s own airspace), that would be a concrete and direct involvement of a NATO state in confronting Russian forces in Ukraine.
3) Russia crosses all lines and plans to assassinate a Western defense industry exec.
We frequently hear about Putin’s ‘‘red lines’’ - but what about our own?
US and German intel agencies discovered and spoiled Russia’s assassination attempt on the head of a German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall Armin Papperger.
(side note: it was the US intel that first uncovered the plot and warned Germans thereafter.)
The intent is clear - deter other manufacturers from helping Ukraine.
Rheinmetall was famously one of the earliest defense industry behemoths to agree to setting up a local production facility in Ukraine.
(side note: and following in the steps of this established precedent, Northrop Grumman became the first US defense industry manufacturer that agreed to produce weapons inside Ukraine.)
One could very well argue that an assassination attempt against the head of Germany’s premier defense manufacturer could very well be deemed as an act of war…
And even if Berlin doesn’t treat it as such, it is a clear violation of all previous norms.
It is Putin that is crossing all ‘‘red lines’’ - it may be reasonable to expect the West to respond vigorously to this: plenty of opportunity to do this by doubling down on arming Ukraine and their own professional sabotage groups - HUR.
The NATO conference was an overall success.
This institution is now 75 years old, and the past week’s highlights in Washington made it clear that the alliance was indispensable for the security of the US and the free world.
There were a number of indisputable wins:
1) Ukraine received the strongest assurance yet.
At last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ukraine did not receive any significant promises of future relationship with the bloc.
The communique was also not as strong and didn’t allay many fears and concerns in Kyiv: it stated that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” - but didn’t provide any timelines.
And although this year’s summit was also light in promises of a specific timeline, the language used was also much more stronger:
The 32-member alliance declared that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path to a full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership”.
This is a much more powerful promise - especially given that a year after the Vilnius summit, Ukraine’s prospects to recapture all of its occupied territories look far less promising.
Last July, Ukraine’s much-awaited (and unfortunately, overhyped) counteroffensive was just at its early stages - there was still hope that the Russian General Surovikin’s defensive lines could still be overcome.
This did not happen, and since then, Ukraine has been on a downwards trajectory.
In fact, only after Congress finally passing the $61bn aid (where realistically, only less than half of the funds are going to be distributed to Ukraine in the form of armaments - the rest is meant for domestic investment and replenishment of DoD stocks here in America) did the leaders in Kyiv breath in a deep sigh of relief.
So strengthening verbal commitments - important signals of intent at the time when Ukraine’s future prospects in the war are still uncertain was crucial.
And you can tell how consequential this all was from the reaction coming out of Ukraine: Andriy Yermak, President Zelenskyy’s closest adviser, said, “We are satisfied with the result of the Washington summit. The language of the document is really strong. The alliance made real steps forward ..”
This is not only important signaling to Putin (that his battlefield gains haven’t killed western resolve, and didn’t succeed in dissuading the alliance from welcoming Ukraine amid its ranks), but also a crucial morale boost to millions of Ukrainians fighting this war: they now have a clear ‘‘irreversible’’ path towards NATO to look forward to.
2) Concrete commitments to Ukraine.
NATO is to provide $43 billion in military assistance to Ukraine next year: implicit in this backing, is support for Ukraine however long it takes.
(side note: Ukraine is also finally receiving much-awaited F-16 fighter jets: and it might have its first squadron (around 15-24 jets) ready by the end of the Summer. In addition four Patriot batteries will be transferred and more are yet to come.)
And if Ukraine is to receive $43bn next year, then what is also implied is that there would not be pressure on Ukraine to submit to a bad deal with Russia.
What used to be mere rhetoric is now transforming into action.
In addition, even if future President Trump was to force Ukraine into a bad deal (in order to materialize his promise to solve the crisis instantly) there is now a buffer fund insuring Ukraine against the worst-case scenario outcome of a potential blackmail/threat to withhold funds from Washington if Kyiv was to resist ‘‘negotiations’’ with Putin.
In other words, Ukraine is being Trump-proofed.
3) Forceful on China.
We have long discussed how 1) Europeans don’t have a direct stake in US-China confrontation in the Pacific (exemplified with Macron’s comments about being dragged into Taiwan on behalf of the US), but that 2) They will be dragged into a broader US-China conflict somehow at some point.
And right now, this is happening due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If China was to genuinely sit on the sidelines and do nothing, it could have largely escaped the European ire unscathed.
But that didn’t happen, and even though China is not ramping up all of its industry to support Russia’s military-production needs, it is now supplying a significant amount of dual-use tools and components to support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
And this is clearly unacceptable to Europeans: their eastern flank is being invaded by a revisionist imperialist and Beijing is (to a significant if not full extent) underwriting it.
And this is the reason why NATO members agreed to condemn China as the ‘‘decisive enabler’’ in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
This is a significant escalation - and it will not be limited to rhetoric either.
Beijing must be aware that now that Europeans agree and publicly affirm that China is indeed enabling Russia, then some sort of concrete response will be needed.
This is because the opposite would simply not fly: if China is a decisive enabler, then what are you going to do about it?
And if you are a leader of a European state, then the answer cannot be ‘‘nothing’’.
And to be clear, this will go beyond trade disputes and related countermeasures from the EU (like more than doubling tariffs on Chinese EVs to 37.6% in response to their flooding European markets and displacing local industry and causing potential unemployment in already significantly populist industrial heartland areas of Europe..)
More action will come and this is great news for Washington.
(side note: and once again a reminder to Trump that NATO’s utility goes beyond Europe..)
4) Allies preparing for the Trump era.
And this goes beyond Trump-proofing Ukraine aid into a more proactive vision for the alliance - where Europeans play a more significant role.
Here is a great example: Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur commented that 2% (of the national GDP) spending on Defense was insufficient and that allies “have to go to 2.5, maybe even 3 percent.”
This of course echoes Trump’s frequent complaints that the allies aren’t doing their fair share.
(side note; there is of course overwhelming truth to that: the majority (23/32) are not spending at 2% level, and this includes major countries like Spain, Italy and Canada. In fact, Canada’s PM promised to reach the 2% level by 2032. This is pathetic. This essentially means that Canada is planning to sit out a major confrontation of this decade..)
Estonia’s PM was also notable in his ability to appeal to Trump’s rhetoric on the ‘‘club membership” model of NATO: “NATO is a club. When you have club rules, then you respect the rules and you expect that everyone will also respect the rules…When you pay your fee in the golf club, you can play. It doesn’t matter how big is your wallet.”
Note the use of Golf as an analogy here - clear appeal to Trump.
Great - if this is what it takes to get all members contributing their fare share and granting Trump an argument to stay in the alliance, then all the much better.
Not everything is rosy however.
Being the pre-eminent force in NATO, the US still failed to do what was expected of it: removing all restrictions on Ukraine using US weapons to strike deep in Russia.
Once again, Washington was delaying the necessary and inevitable.
The drip drip drip manner of support continues..
And so Ukrainian leaders were rightly frustrated after Biden waved off their latest request to lift restrictions on using US weapons to strike anywhere inside Russia
(side note: currently, the US only allows it in certain regions bordering Ukraine - like Kharkiv. And moreover, Ukrainians carry the unreasonable burden of proof that the target airfield/base was used in attack against Ukraine)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised the issue at the end of a bilateral discussion on Thursday as the NATO summit concluded.
Biden refused and suggested both sides should keep talking (whatever that means), according to three people familiar with the conversation.
This response didn’t close the door to eventually lifting the restrictions but was far from a "yes," the sources said.
Understandable therefore, Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, were extremely disappointed.
“The feeling is always the same: They will lift restrictions eventually, but some people have to die first. It seems like destroying a children’s hospital is not enough,” - a Ukrainian source said.
This is indeed disheartening to see - sooner or later Washington will almost certainly lift remaining arbitrary restrictions.
At some point, Ukraine will be allowed to fight without its hands tied behind its back: getting to that point now will save countless Ukrainian lives.