WASHINGTON, D.C. — The outlines of what could be future U.S. policy in response to Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine were etched out a conference in the U.S. capital on Feb. 28, with experts emphasizing that Ukraine was on the frontline of a war to protect democracy itself.
All of the speakers urged stronger U.S. and Western support for Ukraine, saying the conflict was not just about Ukraine but about the defense of Western values. Some made specific recommendations that Washington’s policymakers will likely take note of.
The conference, called the U.S.-Ukraine Security Dialogue, was organized by American-Ukrainian academic Walter Zaryckyj, and sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council, the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian relations, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, and the U.S-Ukraine Foundation.
It was held at the prestigious National Press Club in Washington and there were welcome remarks by Ukrainian ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaly, and two members of Congress who are co-chairmen of that body’s Ukrainian caucus – Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick and Democrat Brendan Boyle.
William Taylor, the executive vice president of the United States Institute of Peace, moderated a panel on the Ukrainian army fighting the Russian invasion in the country’s eastern Donbas region. His long diplomatic career has included coordinating U.S. government assistance to the former Soviet Union and to the Middle East. He also served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.
Taylor said the fighting in the Donbas was part of a bigger issue, and that the West had to support Ukraine diplomatically, militarily, and financially.
Russia tries to smash the world order
“At the Institute for Peace we try to prevent and mitigate conflicts, and for 70 years there was no major conflict in Europe because nations agreed to live by rules, norms, standards and treaties, and recognized the sovereignty of their neighbors, and they didn’t violate the borders of their neighbors,” Taylor said.
But in 2014 that changed, said Taylor: “(That was) when one country – Russia – decided that those rules no longer applied. So the question is how to get back to those rules or some version of those rules and to re-establish commitment to sovereignty and the sanctity of borders.
“That cannot be done as long as the Russians are in Donbas and Crimea, as long as they attack their neighbor’s forces as they did on the Kerch Strait last November,” Taylor said.
Michael Carpenter, a foreign policy adviser on Ukraine and the region to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, said that he wanted to focus on solutions to the conflict, which had receded from the headlines. Despite people being killed almost every day, Russia’s war against Ukraine “has unfortunately become a forgotten war,” Carpenter said.
Like many of the other speakers, Carpenter called for more U.S. support for Ukraine and went into detail about what Washington should provide.
John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and presently director for Eurasia at the Atlantic Council think tank, Stephen Blank, Senior Fellow on Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council, and Glen Howard, President of The Jamestown Foundation think tank, talked about the naval component of the conflict.
‘Boa constrictor strategy’
Howard, who was a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies, talked about the Russian naval attack last November on three Ukrainian naval vessels in the Kerch Strait, which links the Black and Azov Seas.
Russian ships, backed by planes and helicopters, fired upon and captured three Ukrainian vessels heading for the Azov Sea, wounding three of their 24 crew. The sailors continue to languish in a Moscow prison.
Howard warned Russia was implementing a “boa constrictor strategy” – after the snake that winds itself around its victims to crush them – to achieve domination in the northern Black Sea, including control of dozens of gas platforms previously operated by Kyiv.
Moscow last year boosted its regular navy and secret intelligence agency fleets in the area by 10 warships, 40 patrol boats and a range of other types of specialized vessels, including some carrying nuclear-capable cruise missiles, said Howard. He said the Kremlin was using Crimea as a platform from which to project power into the Mediterranean and to threaten the Ukrainian mainland.
Howard said the bridge Russia had constructed across the Kerch Strait, linking Russia to occupied Crimea, was designed to deliberately restrict shipping into the Azov Sea. That in turn, affected Ukraine’s economy, by reducing shipments to and from Ukraine’s Azov Sea ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk – the loading points for important steel and agriculture exports.
Prioritizing the navy
Howard said a big problem hitherto has been that the Ukrainian government has viewed the conflict as primarily a land war and has neglected building up the country’s navy into a force capable of confronting increasingly aggressive Russian naval activity. That, he said, should change – with U.S. help.
Blank, who spent 24 years as a professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, said the Russian navy was protecting Moscow’s theft of Ukraine’s gas resources. It poses a great threat by its ability to launch naval bombardments both from the Black and Azov Seas, to enable amphibious attacks against ground targets, and implement a blockade to strangle the economy “without firing a shot unless challenged.”
He also pointed to the massive increase in combined arms in Crimea – army, navy and air – and deployments of dual-use missiles that can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
That makes the Russian presence there, he said, a threat far beyond just Ukraine, including the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean.
It challenges freedom of navigation regulations in international waters – something that the United States has always championed. “They are core threats to fundamental principles of international order, not just to Ukraine,” said Blank.
He said that the seizure of Crimea had been planned by Moscow long before the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, when mass demonstrations forced the then pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president to flee.
He said the Sea of Azov has now become a flashpoint for future conflict, especially as Ukraine is mulling withdrawal from a 2003 treaty that gave joint control there to Kyiv and Moscow – an agreement now shredded by the Kremlin’s aggression.
He emphasized the Ukrainian government must give more priority to its navy to make it combat-ready.
“The Sea of Azov issue did not end in November. It’s going to come back and it’s going to hit the Black Sea as well and we better be prepared.”
“Ukraine has to continue a thorough defense reform; it has to develop more naval capability and more naval mentality; it has to understand it is not just a land power – it is a maritime power that has vital maritime interests that must be defended,” said Blank.
U.S.-Ukraine navy cooperation
One rapid way to build up Ukraine’s navy would be for the United States to provide a large number of vessels that it no longer needs but are still in excellent condition in exchange for leasing a port to the U.S. Navy – say in Odesa – Blank suggested.
Ambassador Herbst said that the West had not yet responded adequately to Russia’s aggressive actions.
“They’ve gotten away with seizing ships, they’ve used their own navy in a public way,” he said. “And by doing that they’ve enhanced pressure on the Ukrainian economy in the Donbas, which is dependent upon shipping passing through the Kerch Strait.”
He said that the only price the Kremlin has paid so far for “its act of piracy” was that U.S. President Donald Trump had refused to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a G20 meeting in Argentina last December.
But he believes that there are signs that the U.S. Congress will eventually respond with what he called “appropriate countermeasures,” and that this “will turn a tactical victory for the Kremlin into a strategic defeat, and that’s an objective we should all share.”
Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think-tank and former president and executive director of democracy watchdog Freedom House, posited what he called a “controversial thesis” saying Russia had never, since Putin became leader, been interested in merely having Ukraine in its sphere of influence, but has wanted to dismember the country and destroy Ukrainian statehood.
Kateryna Smagliy, an academic and expert on Ukraine at the McCain Institute think-tank talked about Moscow’s subversion activities to try to claw back some control over Ukraine, when its military objectives to occupy a much larger area of the country failed in 2014.
She said that the Kremlin knows an all-out assault on Ukraine would result in large-scale casualties for Russia, and thus is using hybrid warfare techniques in attempts to influence the March presidential ballot and the fall parliamentary elections to secure a more Moscow-friendly leadership in Ukraine.
