Four years after the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues unabated. For all the failures of the government in Kyiv to reform, Ukraine is still fighting our war. Were it not for Ukrainians’ willingness to defend themselves, NATO would be spending a fortune to reform its past structures and procedures and defend its members against Russian threats. For if Ukrainian independence and/or territorial integrity were suborned by Russia, NATO would be obliged to raise large defenses for Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia in addition to the Baltic detachments already in force. Yet in too many NATO capitals, there is an unwillingness to recognize that Putin is constantly escalating his war against the West as shown by the latest chemical warfare attacks in Salisbury, England. Therefore rendering Ukraine the help it needs even as we pressure it to reform continues to be in US national interests.
One neglected area where we can render material assistance to Ukraine and advance our own self-interest is the naval sphere. Upon seizing Crimea, Moscow destroyed or took over virtually all of Ukraine’s navy, barely leaving it with the resources to build any kind of navy. Ukraine remains vulnerable to threats of amphibious landings on its coast by Russian troops, naval shelling of land targets, or even a naval blockade. Inexplicably the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which in many ways remains a Soviet-type institution, has refused to allocate funding for a real naval defense.
