OPINION: Wisdom in the Noise, Der Germans, Sky Shield & Fighter Pilots, Rakish Diplomacy

I think I can safely say that there was, again, this week, a ton of news and developments seemingly impossible to understand because you are in the middle and absorbing it and it’s coming too fast to make sense of. The goal of this week’s review is to take a step back from the information flood.

But before I get going on that, on the ground, where it counts the most, this week saw the Ukrainians pushed back and in some fairly serious trouble in the Kursk region, scoring multiple but not overly-big gains in the Pokrovsk region. Also, there was a big Russian armored attack in Chasiv Yar – repelled – the Ukrainians counterattacked, now they’re back in the center of the town. The atmospheric soldier photo below, I believe, is from the Luhansk/Serebriansk sector, but I’m not positive about that.

On Friday, there also was another giant missile/drone strike, about 200 incoming aircraft/missiles, the target was energy infrastructure. Details on the internet.

All that’s fit to print about the ceasefire process, and also, everything possible unfit to print

Who’s meeting with whom? Who said what? What did Waltz mean? Trump said Ukraine wants to make a deal. Trump said Ukraine doesn’t want a ceasefire. Trump said he’ll sanction Russia. Trump said Russia has legitimate concerns. How bad is the American arms and intel cut off? Why are the Americans calling it a “pause”? Are there work-arounds? Why did Rubio agree with the Kremlin that the war is a proxy-fight between the US and Russia, when the US cut off support to Ukraine? Does Rubio even have influence in the White House? What did the Europeans say? What will the Europeans do? Will Starmer and Macron visit DC with Zelensky next week. Will the Turks be peacekeepers? Will the Americans accept a partial ceasefire? Russia rejects everything so why all the noise about a peace deal? What about the Hungarians? Saudi Arabia? Ceasefire? Peace Deal? No-fly-zone?

Other Topics of Interest

Europe Faces Existential Risks: Do Its Leaders Get it?

Why the outlook is grim, unless Europe finally gets its act together.

And so on and so forth, etcetera etcetera, ad nauseum et infiditum, and yada yada yada.

Let me be clear, I pretty much never buy conspiracy theories. My experience as a card-carrying grizzled and grumpy reporter is that human incompetence can and usually does explain almost everything in the news that doesn’t make immediate sense.

That being said, I think I am not on a limb to say that state-level players are pushing competing messages out into the information space about the Russo-Ukraine War. If you are reading this, then you are one of the targets of that information campaign (not by me). They all benefit if we don’t think clearly. The more information they flood us with, the harder it is for us to think clearly.

The old reporter trick to deal with this is to acknowledge the messaging is out there and waste as little time on it as possible, and instead focus on the objectives of the players putting out the messages. Ask not: “What does this news item mean?” Ask: “What agenda does this news item advance?”

This is not to say all the news items are invented, far from it. Almost always there is some form of a basic fact in each factoid. But, with the news-makers actively involved in pushing the information they want seen into the public space, what they’re pushing isn’t so important. Why they’re doing it, and what are their goals – that’s the thing.

Trump Administration: They want to get a ceasefire by any means as quickly as possible. This is primarily to deliver a diplomatic “win” to their electorate. They could care less about Ukrainian national interests. European security and stability are unimportant to them. They want out of NATO. They assign little value to an actual peace deal and even less to a lasting peace deal. They just want a ceasefire now. Anyone in the way of “ceasefire” or “now” is the enemy. They don’t care that Ukraine has years of experience with broken ceasefires and bad peace deals. Their message is “this time it’s different.” The beauty of the message is that if you buy it, the past becomes irrelevant.

This is why Trump cut off American intelligence and arms to Ukraine. Better relations with Russia would be nice but that’s not the main thing. The main thing is, ceasefire now, don’t care what comes after. So pressure Ukraine. The “proof” the pressure worked will be a “deal,” a fairly exploitative minerals development agreement signed by the Ukrainians.

This is why Vance spit on the proposition of a limited European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. This is why Kellogg this week, said that Ukraine needed to be “Hit in the head with a two-by-four like a stubborn mule.” This is why Rubio this week called Ukraine an obstacle to peace.

A sovereign Ukraine insisting on security stands in the way of a quick ceasefire engineered by the Trump administration. This makes sovereign Ukraine a fair target for every weapon the American state might deploy against a small country. In the view of the White House, Ukrainians and Ukrainian national interests are orders of magnitude more expendable than federal workers or respect for constitutional checks and balances. There is absolutely no down side in lying to the Ukrainians, or in lying to the US public about the Ukrainians.

Zelensky Administration: The objective is, of course, to protect Ukrainian statehood, but equally, to prepare the ground for Russian defeat. The Ukrainian national leadership is thinking like the Viet Cong or the Chinese Communists, their campaign time frame looks years and potentially decades ahead.

If a ceasefire or something similar is to take place, from the Ukrainian point of view, it is “temporary” for a few to several years, and over that time it must undermine Russia and strengthen Ukraine. Tactically, for the Ukrainians, the Americans – who aren’t pure Russian agents but they are so dismissive of Ukraine they might as well be – need to be delayed, frustrated, and either forced to pressure Russia into useful concessions, or more probably fobbed off until American ADD syndrome kicks in and the White House runs off to be energetic and beat its chest about something else besides Ukraine.

This is why, this week, we saw Zelensky come out in favor of the Sky Shield plan (this is the old no-fly-zone idea revisited, see below). A static front where the Russians don’t fly suits Ukraine very well, that improves attrition rates and shuts down the Russian air force. If the Americans don’t go for it, fine, much time will be wasted arguing.

The longer the argument lasts, the more the US government will be exposed as unwilling to be serious about European security, which will increase pressure on Europe to step in to help Ukraine. Also, the longer the argument, the more the Ukrainians will enjoy watching Zelensky string Trump along. Ukraine has bazaars, everyone knows how to haggle.

Trump 1.0 signed a deal with the Afghan government for US development of Afghan natural resources which, Trump said at the time, would guarantee continued US support to a democratic Afghanistan.

Within months, the Trump administration had signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban, cutting out the democratic Afghan government, the same people he signed the mineral development deal with, out of the withdrawal talks. The Ukrainians are under no illusions about whom they’re dealing with.

The US national leadership is hostile.

Europe, Written Large: As always, Europe is so varied in parts it’s risky to write anything about a common European view, but, the general idea that Ukraine must be supported and the deep emotional desire to tell the Americans to get stuffed is widely-shared across the continent.

Leaders of the very big countries, i.e. France, Britain, and (sort of) Germany, further, can’t sit passively – their electorates expect them to lead. As we have seen this week, the European states started talking very seriously about huge defense investment, and personally, I bet we’ll see it become reality. But in the shorter term, and in the Ukrainian context, this is a big reason why the Sky Shield idea is now being pushed by London and Paris.

But equally, the longer the ceasefire/peace talks drag on without an effective change in the war, the longer the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) writes down the Russian army, and the more time the Europeans have to go through the decision process that will allow them to re-arm.

Trump foreign policy may appeal to the domestic base, but, abroad, it has created a clearly-defined figure – Trump himself – whom the Europeans can clearly identify as a traitor. This will not facilitate European cooperation with US foreign policy objectives, and appears this week to have effected a miracle: Europe uniting to commit major money to defend itself. 

A good dive-down example is the Trump decision to cut off intel to Ukraine. The White House spun it as US pressure on Ukraine and smart negotiating. That’s maybe yes and maybe no, but also, the US decision to cut off Ukraine from intel streams turned about $100 million worth of Europe-delivered high tech weapons sent to Ukraine into useless junk.

This was an overtly hostile act, by the US, against the national security policies of at least five major European states. A reporter – or a European state – trying to figure out what the White House policy on Europe is has the option of trying to parse every contradictory declaration Trump and his entourage shove out into the public domain every news cycle. My opinion, it’s a whole lot easier to just look at the Americans’ actions.

The Russians: Appear to believe that they are winning and that they are under no pressure whatever to agree to a ceasefire, cede terrain, or cut any other kind of deal in any kind of hurry. They may actually see things differently, but their internal dogma bans serious discussion of that. Just yesterday Trump told White House reporters, I’m not making this up, he had a secret plan known only to him that would inevitably bring Russia to the table.

The Kremlin, probably THE world expert in manipulative messaging, is openly contemptuous. Their entire information manufacturing infrastructure – officials, “analysts”, talk shows, interviews with “average Russians” on the street – are lockstep in the Russian view on Trump administration claims the United States will soon bring peace to Ukraine: “You can’t make us, we dare you to try.”

What does it all mean?: Well, obviously decide that for yourself. But, I would argue, if the foregoing seems rational, then this week and the avalanche of media noise has basically shown us:

• The Trump administration is absolutely hell-bent on achieving a ceasefire with powerful entities it cannot control (Ukraine, Russia, Europe) standing in the way of that.
• The Ukrainians are playing for time and treating the US as a hostile state.
• The Europeans are also playing for time and are coming around to treating the US as a hostile state.
• The Russians are laughing at the Americans and intend to destroy Ukraine and the Ukrainians, so in the view of the Kremlin, perhaps the White House can help with that.

Stubb Speech – Apropos of making sense of the noise, there are better ways than this blog.

If the foregoing doesn’t seem to you like a recipe for a quick end to the war, I agree.

Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, made, I think, a brilliant presentation of what the most realistic approach to a peace process in Ukraine would be. Although it would be overstating things to say that this is the official European policy, I bet de facto it’s probably close.

Stubb says there are three steps (1) strengthening and stabilizing Ukrainian fighting capacity (2) negotiating a ceasefire and then (3) negotiating a peace. It can only happen in that order and each next step is predicated on total completion of the previous one. Stubb’s main point is, we’re still working on step one, let’s focus on making that happen.

Go ahead, compare this man to Trump or Putin. Now remember: Stubb wasn’t speaking in his native language.

It turns out Stubb’s spent more than a little time in the US, on a golfing scholarship in South Carolina of all things. I would bet Stubb knows Trump voters, and heck, Trump campaign contributors, at least as well as the people in the White House. I couldn’t find a good image of Stubb on the links so I’ve attached an image of the President of Finland finishing a triathlon.

German fixation

I continue to direct your attention to Germany which, I still predict, will be decisive in the progress of the war. In the early part of the week Friedrich Merz proposed the Reichstag to approve a €3.2 billion defense aid package for Ukraine before the current government ends its term.

Talks are moving ahead. I read in the German press, the expectation is Germany will create of a €500 billion fund (!) over 10 years to upgrade infrastructure, transport, energy, and digitization. Also, defense spending above the 1% of GDP debt restriction will be allowed. I read that debate begins on Mar. 13 and must end on Mar. 18, because on Mar. 25 there will be a new parliament and it will be harder to push through the changes then.

The financial pubs are reporting the overall adrenalin shot to the German economy could be worth a trillion Euros (!!), meaning, hundreds of billions of Euros going into German re-armament and a smaller portion of that going to Ukraine’s war effort. Fortune I think calculated it at “one-quarter of the entire German economy.”

Switching up to a tacky sports metaphor, if European re-armament were to be compared to a sofa slob getting himself into shape, Germany will be responsible for the corps, the cardio, and about half the major muscle groups. If Germany re-arms, Europe re-arms.

Compared to that, the entire Russian national Federal budget in 2024 was about $350 billion. The entire Russian defense budget – $75 billion.

It is really getting boring making fun of people who kept saying Vladimir Putin was this genius Russian politician thinking ten steps ahead. Still, if Merz GMBH and his security trading buddies find the funds they seem pretty convinced they will find, then by Mar. 18, 2025 at the latest, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will go down in history as the Russian leader personally responsible for reversing the Great Patriotic War’s main achievement, converting Germany from a passive-friendly to a rival state, and launching massive and inevitably overwhelming German re-armament aimed squarely at Russia. Image of a German tank cannon being manufactured.

Parallel with that this week there was this news item – on Tuesday there was a UN conference reviewing The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Germany had been an observer to the conferences for years. This time, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that in the present European security environment Berlin feels it’s inappropriate for Germany to associate itself with UN treaties banning nuclear proliferation. So far I’ve not spotted any reaction from the Kremlin, but nukes potentially in the hands of Germans is about as red flag as you can get for the Putin regime.

Late addition: On Friday the Poles (Donald Tusk) said they would pursue nuclear weapons. That’s someone else that isn’t confident in the US nuclear shield for Europe.

Yet another message to that pilot in Romania

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that from time to time I have made the observation that if NATO led by the US just got off their collective keysters and clamped down a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the Russians would stop and a lot less people would die. I usually put it in terms of messages to an unknown but highly frustrated US fighter pilot sitting in Romania, knowing that if his government did the right thing and moved to help Ukrainians fighting for Freedom, he would be a righteous warrior in a righteous cause, and the USAF would just clean the Russian Air Force’s clocks.

Fast-forward three years, and one thing is for sure, that fighter jock clearly isn’t an American.

He (or she) is more likely a Brit or a Frenchman, or, less likely, a Romanian or a Turk. Although F-16s might be possible, the likeliest aircraft of Western intervention in Ukraine’s skies is probably an RAF Typhoon or a Service Aéronautique Mirage. But I suspect the frustration is still there. Anyway, this is sufficient pretext for a RAF Typhoon image.

It appears Macron and Starmer have talked and they propose to pitch a partial no-fly zone to the Americans, as I see it, less because they think it would get implemented, and more to prevent the Americans from just plowing ahead and cutting a deal with Russians selling out the Ukrainians, because the Europeans have no ideas at all. Zelensky has, unsurprisingly, declared the plan excellent and a great step towards peace. His idea is a ceasefire in the air and on the sea, which would be great for Ukraine. Russia would object.

So, pretty much at this point it’s all theoretical, but from the discussion, we have a bit more detail than in the past of what the air watch side of that idea looks like. Map attached. All in all, this is the 2022 no-fly-zone re-branded, now it’s called “Sky Shield.” The Guardian wrote about it and I think some other British pubs as well.

The idea is that a coalition of willing European states would fly over west and central Ukraine to shoot down Shaheds and intercept ballistic missiles, while the Ukrainians would be responsible for eastern Ukraine. There would be about 120 combat aircraft and engagement with Russian forces (and so risk of World War III) would be avoided because – supposedly – the Russians don’t fly deep strikes into Ukrainian air space and so the European fighter guys would always be 200 kilometers (124 miles) or further from the Russian Air Force. Clever, right? 

I’m just one observer, so these are the Sky Shield nitpicks that jumped out at me, a ground guy. I’m sure there are more.

- What about Ukrainian aircraft operating from airfields covered by Sky Shield? We know where the airfields are. I’m sure the Ukrainians would love to have the French and Royal Air Force protect their air bases. I’m not so sure the Russians would go for it.

- Crimea is still where it was before and it’s crammed with Russian airfields. According to this plan, the Europeans, not the Ukrainians, would be first to observe and potentially intercept Russian air strikes flown from Crimean airfields. Those air strikes are covered by Su-35s and sometimes, I hear, Su-57s. There is no Ukrainian air space separating European/Sky Shield air space from Russia-controlled Crimea air space. The “they’ll be 200 kilometers apart” guarantee doesn’t really cover this.

- In October 2022, a Russian fighter shot a missile at a British reconnaissance plane in exactly this air space. The pilot was sure he got the engage order but fortunately the missile malfunctioned, so no WW3. It doesn’t really look like this Sky Shield deal has a lot of safeguards to prevent a repeat incident.

- I have checked with my air war/zoomie buddies, and 100-120 aircraft isn’t close to enough to close the air space. France and Britain have terrific pilots, great ground crew, but either more air forces would need to be found, or France and Britain would have to go to something like a war footing to make this Sky Shield happen.

-How rules of engagement would work with civilian airliners passing through this, plus the Ukrainian Air Force doing its thing everywhere, is just beyond me. I assume something could get written, but, my opinion, even if several squadrons of Prince Voltan’s Hawkmen escorted by Richard Bong and the Red Baron were flying this Sky Shield mission, I would expect things to go catastrophically wrong. This is more than sufficient pretext for a Brian Blessed image.

- This is all before the Russians start trying to create problems by shooting missiles and drones into the air space mix

- This is also all before the Ukrainian drone operators find the gaps in the coverage and go on killing Russians. There is no power on Earth that can stop them, if they choose to try.

Smaller Items:

European arms to Ukraine – I just checked, since Trump got elected, the value of Rheinmetall stock has more than doubled. Their press office tells me two German factories that used to make just auto parts, will now make auto parts and military components. As noted, Rheinmetall’s operations in Ukraine include a repair base for German armored vehicles, and construction of an assembly line for Fuchs fighting vehicles.

Best.MG.Ever. – Czech weaponry popped up in the news twice this week. First, it turns out Colt CZ Group has small arms production going, in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian state arms manufacturer Ukroboronpron. They are producing the Bren 2, which is NATO-standard automatic rifle with an excellent reputation. Four hundred weapons a day. Production is planned to increase. Plans for ammo production and parts production in Ukraine are moving ahead. A company official put the number of rifles made so far in the tens of thousands. Follow-on is production of the P10 pistol and the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 automatic pistol. Corporate image of the AR.

And Czech Artillery Shells – The Czech STV Group is expanding a Czech-based production line from around 100,000 shells a year to 200,00 shells a year. This is 155mm, the critical caliber. Corporate spokesmen said a new line will be operational by the end of the year, raising capacity to 300,000 shells/year.

And American artillery shells – I know this is a cheap shot, but in the US state Oklahoma, work on setting up a state-of-the-art 155mm shell production line came to a halt because DOGE (US Department of Government Efficiency) ordered about a thousand employees laid off at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. US Senator James Lankford (R), a strong supporter of cutting government waste and the Trump administration, has gone public with his objection. In his view, US national security is better protected if voters at McAlester get their jobs back. You can’t make this stuff up. 

Ukrainian arms manufacturing in Ukraine – Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal gave us a useful baseline this week. As of now, Ukraine manufactures about 35% of its weapons and the goal is 50%. He cited since-war’s-start increased manufacture of artillery pieces (three times), armored vehicles (five times), anti-tank weapons (double) and shells and mortar rounds (2.5 times) as successes. Priority this year will be to grow 122mm and 155mm shell production, which makes sense.

The drone numbers are already in the public domain: 1.25-1.5 million in 2024, 2.5-4 million in 2025. My evaluation is that that makes Ukraine the biggest military drone manufacturer on Earth, outstripping for instance Israel, Turkey by a giant margin, and the People’s Republic of China by a meaningful margin.

According to Shmyhal, overall, Ukrainian arms manufacturing in 2025 will be worth about $35 billion, which is already far more than most countries.

Sneaky US end-run on Ukraine blows up in White House face - On Wednesday, Politico reported the Trump team secretly contacted Ukrainian “opposition” politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko for exploratory talks on how to get rid of Zelensky. They both told the Americans the same thing Zelensky has said for years, which is – the Ukrainian constitution says martial law bans elections, Russia has invaded Ukraine, therefore in Ukraine there is martial law and there are not elections.

By my calculation, it took all of 72 hours for these clandestine, sneaky, world’s-greatest-deal-maker Trump administration maneuvers to push Zelensky out of their path (which, by the way, constitutes direct US interference in the internal political processes of a democratic state) to reach the public domain, via Politico.

Poroshenko is a marginal rival to Zelensky but for years he has said the war comes first and domestic politics only afterwards, this has been his unchanged position since the first day of the war.

Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a nice enough lady, is a political has-been that only a person truly ignorant of Ukrainian politics would contact about a possible play for political leadership in the country.

I know of newsrooms that laughed out loud when they found out the Americans thought Yulia Tymoshenko was a serious political player in Ukraine.

I am reliably informed the Kyiv diplomatic corps found it quite funny as well. So, all in all, the international reputation for the Trump administration’s foreign policy finesse was hardly burnished, and it sure didn’t contribute towards making the Zelensky administration more inclined towards cooperation with the White House.

It doesn’t seem like the Trump Team chose to (dared to) reach out to him, which is a little strange, because if the Trump people are going to try to oust Zelensky, by far the second-most popular public figure in Ukraine is General Valery Zaluzhny.

Less than 24 hours after the news of secret US back channel moves towards Ukraine’s opposition reached the public domain, Zaluzhny issued a statement: No elections until peace, Zelensky is Ukraine’s wartime leader, he has the full support of the Ukrainian people and Zaluzhny personally.

What’s more, Trump and America – Zaluzhny called him out by name – are attacking Europe’s security and stability. The Americans need to start behaving like a civilized country and stop siding with dictators. Zaluzhny’s job right now is ambassador to Great Britain, but he’s a career soldier and he speaks pretty directly. Zaluzhny, when he ran the ZSU, was great for images, the one attached is the General in a reasonably friendly mood.

Zaluzhny is a physically big guy with a reputation for a pretty short fuse. More than one Ukrainian service member has pointed out to me that if Trump and Vance had tried yelling at General Zaluzhny like they did with Zelensky, the US Secret Service would have had challenging work to do and someone not Ukrainian in the Oval Office would have wound up with a black eye.

But the second-to-final nail in the coffin was the latest popularity polls in Ukraine. Three days after Trump and Vance yelled at Zelensky in the White House, Zelensky’s ratings shot up ten points to 57%. One week later, as of today, it was 68%. Unsurprisingly, Ukrainians are obviously rallying around their wartime leader.

What could be worse for US leverage on Ukraine than all that? The final nail?

Next week the Americans and the Ukrainians will be in talks, in Saudi Arabia. The Americans have already thrown away all their leverage over the Ukrainians. Once you take away military support, you no longer can threaten you’ll take it away. It’s not like the Ukrainians don’t know how to survive a US arms embargo – for almost half of 2024 the Americans stopped everything. Now the ZSU leads the world in strike drone manufacturing and operation, and the Russian army has been fought to a standstill.

So whichever genius Trump administration official (Waltz? Rubio? Gabbard? Vance? Trump himself?) came up with the bright idea of going behind Zelensky’s back, and cutting off US intelligence feeds and arms deliveries to Kyiv, so the Mighty United States of America might exert its will and bully puny Ukraine – all in all not exactly a positive outcome for Team USA.

Now, when the American negotiating team in Riyadh says “You have to sign! Do what we say or else!” we can be confident the Ukrainian delegation is going to answer “Or else what? Is your plan to make Zelensky even more popular?”

Image of a rake.

Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.