NATO member states are hollowing out their armed forces in their rush to arm Ukraine for a proxy fight with Russia, defence and foreign affairs experts have said after a stray missile incident undermined trust in the Kiev regime.
The Kiev regime tested the patience of its Western backers on Tuesday night when President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded NATO intervene militarily against Russian forces — after two people were killed by a stray missile falling in neighbouring Poland.
After several hours of anonymous briefings from Washington and Polish media reports that two Russian missiles had hit the NATO member, it was confirmed that it was fired from a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile (SAM) battery — although Kiev continues to deny this.
That has prompted calls from many quarters — including some in the US Republican Party — to cut off the tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine which has strained the ability of western militaries and arms industries to sustain.
The US military has reportedly run so low on ammunition for howitzers it supplied to Ukraine that it is looking to buy 100,000 shells from South Korea. But it is not the only country to overextend itself.
Spain has this week pledged six of its 36 MIM-23 Hawk SAM systems in response to Kiev's call for more air defences against Russian cruise missiles and kamikaze drones.
Croatia announced on Tuesday that it will send 14 Soviet-made Mi-8 helicopters from a total inventory of 25, although they were due to be phased out of service in 2026 and the air force will run out of spare parts for them in 2023. As for their replacement, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković only hinted that the government was in discussions with the US on buying UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
The Czech Republic has donated 40 T-72 main battle tanks (MBTs) from its small army, while 90 more mothballed examples are being renovated by a private company — paid for by the US and Netherlands. Neighbouring Slovakia has given up its only squadron of fighter jets, 30 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and an S-300 SAM system.
While the US has been the biggest contributor to arming the Kiev regime in money terms, Ukraine's western neighbour Poland has provided more heavy equipment than any other nation, including more than 230 T-72s, 40 BMP-1s, 72 AHS Krab armoured self-propelled heavy howitzers and various other artillery.
Milking the Cow
Political analyst and commentator Adriel Kasonta, a former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at the Bow Group think-tank, called attempts to draw NATO into the conflict a "tragedy," adding that "Many actors who have been hostile over the years and over the course of the special operation in Ukraine conducted by Russia [are] trying to use this tragic incident to their advantage."
The analyst stressed how the incident showed Poland needed to build up its own military capabilities, rather than pouring its equipment into the black hole "If Polish air defence was good, it was meeting a military standard, it should see what happened. Predict what happened and provide the answers," Kasonta said.
"If Polish air defence was good, it was meeting a military standard, it should see what happened. Predict what happened and provide the answers," Kasonta said. However, the commentator believes the Polish government is "malicious and clever" enough to take advantage of the "sad situation" in the village of Przewodow.
"They will say that, listen, we need more money," Kasonta said. "We need more equipment to be better prepared for possibility of such incidents in the future. So they will milk the cow and ask the United States to either send more equipment or in order to strengthen the eastern flank, send more American troops."
But citizens of western European countries are "reluctant to suffer" for Ukraine, which is neither a member of the European Union nor of NATO, he stressed.
"They are not willing to sacrifice the well-being of their own households at the expense of some war that could have been easily prevented if the West and especially United States would have granted a security guarantees to Russia," Kasonta said.
David T. Pyne, a former US Department of Defenсe officer and member of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, told Sputnik that the Polish missile incident showed NATO countries should focus on their own defence, not militarising Ukraine.
"Even after he was presented with evidence that it was one of their own missiles, Ukrainian President Zelensky continued to claim that it was a Russian terror attack on Poland in the hopes that he could persuade NATO to escalate its proxy war against Russia," Pyne said.
He pointed out the yawning gap between Russia's extensive network of multi-layered and integrated early waring and SAM systems and NATO's handful of outdated and low-performance air defences — many of which are simply air-to-air missiles mounted on ground vehicles.
"NATO air and missile defences are much more limited than Russian national missile defences," Pyne said, stressing that "this incident as well as the various Russian military drones that have penetrated deep into NATO airspace underscore the need for NATO to greatly increase its missile defence capabilities."
But he added that the need to re-vamp the West's defence networks would by "greatly lessened if NATO were to recognize Russia’s legitimate security interests in Ukraine and support an immediate cease fire."
That should be followed by signing a "Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) II Treaty in which all western NATO troops and Russian troops were withdrawn from Eastern Europe including Ukraine and Belarus."
Russia has repeatedly warned NATO and other allies of the US against arming Ukraine since the start of its military operation on February 24, saying shipments of weapons into a warzone are legitimate targets.
Moscow has also said the flow of arms from the West will only prolong the conflict, which Washington is determine to fight to "the last Ukrainian."
Weaponry supplied to Ukraine has already turned up for sale on the black market across Europe. In August a US broadcaster pulled a documentary by a pro-Ukrainian filmmaker from its website which revealed that just a third of military aid actually made it to the front line. The Pentagon has now set up a 300-strong auditing task-force led by a three-star general at its Ramstein airbase in Germany to keep track of supplies.
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