Allies up military support amid emerging atrocities in Ukraine

Allies are upping military support to Ukraine amid the latest, devastating images of war atrocities coming from Bucha, sending more drones, missiles and, for the first time, tanks.  

With Russia’s attack on Ukraine in its sixth week, however, there remains a significant chasm between what Kyiv says it needs to win the war and what the West says it can provide. 

“There’s obviously a lot more the U.S. could be doing,” said Steven Horrell, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a former U.S. naval intelligence officer. “The balancing point from those who are making the decisions is ‘would that or would that not be more escalatory?’”  

The U.S. and Europe continue to focus largely on sanctions and other penalties meant to cripple the Kremlin’s economy and make the country an international pariah in response to alleged war crimes at the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Military support for Ukraine has also steadily increased during the war, but — short of the fighter jets and no-fly zone that Kyiv has requested — Ukrainian officials have warned Western leaders they too will have blood on their hands if they do not do more.

Earlier this week, news broke that the Czech Republic has been quietly sending old Soviet-designed tanks into Ukraine — the first time another country had provided the vehicles to Kyiv since the Kremlin began its invasion on Feb. 24. And the Biden administration on Tuesday said it would send up to $100 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, its fourth such lethal aid package to the country since the war began, after confirming that it sent more than 100 switchblade drones. 

Photos of civilians apparently killed execution-style by Russian troops in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha have drawn fresh outrage over the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine. Images of the fallen suggested Russian troops had indiscriminately tortured, shot and killed individuals during their occupation of the town, and satellite images indicated that bodies had been left in the streets for weeks, contradicting Moscow’s claims that the photos were staged. 

The United States and other countries quickly moved to punish Russia, with the Biden administration on Wednesday announcing a wave of new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest banks, Putin’s two adult daughters and family members of Russia’s top diplomat, as well as blacklisting members of Russia’s Security Council.  

“I made clear that Russia would pay a severe and immediate price for its atrocities in Bucha,” President Biden tweeted in revealing the sanctions. 

Biden’s action follows that of European Union leaders, who on Tuesday said they planned to phase out Russian coal imports. Some countries also moved to expel groups of so-called Russian “intelligence officers” registered as diplomats. Greece, Denmark, Italy, France and Germany all pushed out such individuals this week. 

And the United Kingdom, a country no longer part of the E.U., revealed its own new sanctions, including a freeze on Russia’s largest bank and a pledge to end Kremlin oil and coal imports by the end of the year. 

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an emotionally charged speech to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, called for more to be done and for the body to expel Russia.  

“Where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee? It is not there, though there is a Security Council,” Zelensky said in a fiery speech that referenced citizens thrown into wells and “crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road,” and women “raped and killed in front of their children.”

In addition to harsher penalties for Russia, Zelensky has pushed for the transfer of larger weapons including fighter jets, tanks and missile defense systems.  

Though Russia has the military advantage over Ukraine due to its larger troop numbers and more advanced weapons, the Ukrainian forces have been able to hold major cities through sheer will and billions of dollars’ worth of Western-supplied weapons. 

Zelensky weeks ago stopped publicly pressing NATO to enforce a no-fly zone in the skies over Ukraine – a step the United States and the alliance could quickly escalate and expand the war  – but the Ukrainian leader continues to plead for major defense systems to hold Kremlin troops at bay. 

In particular, Kyiv wants Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets and S-300 long-range air defense systems currently scattered around the continent, weapons they are already familiar with and are trained to use. 

Those asks, however, have been met with resistance. The U.S. has outright rejected Poland’s plans from March to transfer its entire fleet of MiG-29s to a U.S. base in Germany to then be sent to Ukraine, calling the idea not “tenable.” 

And the U.S. has sought to have Slovakia provide its S-300 systems to Ukraine, but the NATO ally wants a guarantee it will quickly get a “proper replacement” for the system. There has yet to be a public agreement between the two countries.   

Zelensky later denounced the West for its “ping-pong about who and how should hand over jets and other defensive weapons to us.” 

Horrell, the former naval intelligence officer, called it a “negative” that the U.S. has consistently said what it would and wouldn’t do in response to Russia’s invasion. 

“Sadly, I think that’s not productive.” Horrell told The Hill. “Everything that we take off the table represents an advantage for [Putin].” 

But the clear scenes of Russian brutality have prompted Western countries to take further action to try to bring the war to an end, he noted.  

“The recent decision for the Czechs to send T-72 tanks, it reflects that it’s just been one more thing crystallizing the West’s reaction and response in favor of Ukraine.”