Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Ukraine won’t sit passively by while Russia blockades and destroys its Black Sea ports and grain silos, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told me late last month in an interview in his office.
“You threaten our ships or those of our friends and we will mirror what you do,” he pledged to the Russians. He wasn’t kidding.
On Aug. 4, Kyiv used sophisticated sea drones to damage a Russian warship outside the key Russian Black Sea naval base of Novorossiysk, the first time such a weapon had hit a Russian port. On the same day, Ukraine’s maritime authority warned that any ships approaching six Russian Black Sea ports would be at “war risk” — a response to Russia’s threats against international ships carrying Ukrainian grain.
“We had a good experience with the Moskva,” Reznikov recalled, referring to the Russian flagship Ukraine sunk in April 2022 with a Ukrainian-designed Neptune missile. “We have the capacity to continue this story,” he added.
Indeed, Kyiv’s skilled, crowdfunded tech sector, which has been working side-by-side with the military, has developed a new weapon — sophisticated sea drones — whose long-range capabilities have taken the Russian invaders by surprise.
On Aug. 5, a drone attack hit a Russian oil tanker off the east coast of occupied Crimea. Reznikov warned that Ukraine will respond to Moscow’s destruction of Ukrainian exports by imposing economic costs on Russian oil and other exports traversing Black Sea waters. He told me bluntly, “The price will rise for insurance for ships going into Russian ports via the Black Sea.”
This is not, as claimed by some shortsighted critics of U.S. aid to Ukraine, a dangerous tit-for-tat battle in a conflict that has deteriorated into an endless war of attrition and has nothing to do with the United States.
This is Ukraine taking upon itself the heavy burden of fighting to preserve the principle of freedom of navigation in international waters that Russian warships are illegally attempting to dominate. Far better if NATO members would patrol these waters, given that three NATO nations border the Black Sea: Bulgaria, Romania and the militarily powerful Turkey. But the White House has made clear it has no interest in such patrols taking place.
Yet, if NATO permits Russia to illegally control much of the Black Sea, why should it not attempt to do the same in the Arctic, the Baltic Sea or off the Aleutian Islands near Alaska?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, jointly with the United Nations, had brokered a deal in July 2022 that enabled Ukraine to export some of its grain, which is critical to global food markets. But Russia thumbed its nose at Erdogan and NATO by quitting the deal last month and threatening international shipping.
Kyiv still hopes Erdogan might persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to renew the deal, because, as Reznikov put it, the Turkish leader considers this “a very important mission.” The defense minister noted that Turkey “has the military capacity” to escort Ukrainian grain ships “but it is a political question.” So far no sign that Erdogan will take up that challenge.
Meantime, Russia’s response to mediation efforts to restore the grain deal has been to punish Ukraine by raining missiles and Iranian-made drones on its Black Sea port in Odesa and its river ports on the Danube.
Moscow has also continued its criminal attacks on civilian infrastructure in other cities, targeting a Kharkiv blood bank filled with donors in apparent reprisal for the drone hits. A blood bank!
So there is much more the United States and NATO allies should be doing to help the Ukrainian David’s daring sea drone attacks by limiting the Russian Goliath’s ability to hit back from the air.
“We must continue to strengthen our air defenses,” Reznikov told me. “Our priority No. 1 is to protect our major cities.”
After more than a year of hesitation, the Biden administration finally greenlit the delivery of two U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems to Kyiv in April, which now successfully defend Ukraine’s capital city.
“We need more Patriots and NASAMS (another surface-to-air missile system),” Reznikov said, “to defend the port hub of Odesa, along with Lviv, Kharkiv, and the industrial region of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.” Those air defense systems will also be vital if the fighting continues through winter so that Moscow cannot wholly destroy Ukraine’s electric power generation systems and freeze the country.
Listening to Reznikov, two things became clear: First, at this critical point in the war, it is self-defeating for the West to slow-walk weapons systems that could speed a positive outcome of the counteroffensive. And second, Washington must expand its vision of how this war could end.
The defense minister stressed that the arrival of U.S.-made F-16 warplanes (provided by NATO allies in Europe) will be a “game changer. F-16s or other modern fourth-generation-plus planes would strengthen our air defenses.”
Moreover, the arrival of modern aircraft would change the whole dynamic of the current ground battle, in which Kyiv has only limited numbers of old Soviet warplanes that are vastly outnumbered by modernized Russian fighter jets. Ukrainian infantry are essentially fighting without air cover, which flies in the face of NATO military doctrine which demands that an advancing army first take control of the skies.
However, Washington delayed approval so long for permitting European allies to even begin training F-16 pilots that the warplanes won’t arrive in time for the current counteroffensive. “The first of these birds will fly in the spring,” Reznikov told me.
Big opportunity missed.
Which brings me to the second takeaway from my interview: If the administration wants this war to end soon and successfully, it must not be timid about aiding Ukraine’s innovative efforts to halt Russian aggression from the Black Sea.
The White House foot-dragging on F-16s, and on delivering the long-range missiles known as ATACMS, appears to reflect a fear that attacks on major Russian supply depots and bases in Crimea would cross a red line with Putin. However, the Crimean Peninsula has become a heavily armed fortress pushing into the belly of southern Ukraine from the Black Sea. Cutting it off from Russian supply lines is key to Ukraine winning this war.
Kyiv is making clear it can’t wait for the White House.
With its sea drone attacks, including a new hit that damaged Putin’s prized Kerch bridge linking Russia to Crimea, Kyiv is making clear it can’t wait for the White House: neutralizing Crimea and the Black Sea fleet is a critical step toward forcing Russian troops to leave Ukraine.
Reznikov believes the administration may be changing its thinking on Crimea. “Maybe last year Crimea was a red line,” he said. “But when we asked for Harpoon anti-ship missiles right after the Russian invasion,” he recalled, “we were told it was ‘impossible.’ So we used the Ukrainian-made Neptune to sink the Moskva. After that we got the Harpoons.
“Last week it was very noisy in Crimea. That means we will use every moment to destroy their ammunition depots and their headquarters.”
In other words, Ukraine will move forward with its own technological innovations but hopes their success will spur Washington to deliver systems it is still delaying. The chances of overall success would be dramatically increased if F-16s could be delivered sooner (why not train the pilots at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where there are more experienced trainers?).
And there’s no excuse for the White House to hold back ATACMS long-range missiles, which could amplify the drone attacks on Russian supply depots and Crimean bases.
When I asked Reznikov how Ukraine could win, he quickly replied, “As we did it before. A lot of countries thought Kyiv would fall in three nights and we liberated our territory.”
Then I asked where he thought Ukraine would be in a year. “I hope we will meet next year and I will not be minister of defense, meaning we won and you can fly into Boryspil airport” in Kyiv, he retorted. “We will discuss internal reforms, and whether or not they are enough, and rebuilding the country. And also our new security architecture with our NATO partners.”
If Ukrainian determination and technological skill can be combined with swift delivery of key U.S. systems, Reznikov’s hopes may not be a dream.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
