WASHINGTON – When I look back at NATO’s 75th anniversary summit earlier this month, the image that will stick in my mind will not come from the conference.
However, it will be the impossible sight of a pediatric surgeon – white apron covered in blood – desperately trying to save a small bald patient trapped in the rubble after a Russian Kh-101 missile destroyed the chemotherapy ward at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv last time. Monday.
By deliberately targeting the most advanced children’s medical facility in Ukraine on the eve of the NATO conference – as well as a nearby maternity hospital specializing in pregnancy problems – Vladimir Putin sent a chilling message to NATO members as well as President Joe Biden.
“I can do whatever I want to Ukraine, and you won’t stop me,” Putin said effectively, daring his NATO allies to prove otherwise.
“Russia has shown that it is not worried about the consequences,” Ukrainian parliamentarian Yehor Cherniev said. “The lack of a strong reaction (to the hospital bombing) convinces them that they are right.”
The lack of strong reaction reflects a summit that, for all its tangible achievements, is still bewildered by a frightening lack of leadership in Washington – from both parties. It exacerbated NATO’s failure to really put Ukraine on a clear path to membership. And Putin smiled.
Most surprising was former President Donald Trump’s inability to grasp Moscow’s threat when he spoke at a campaign rally about his “very good relationship with Putin” and his disdain for NATO. (Summiters spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to “Trump-proof” more military aid to Ukraine.)
But Biden, aware of the stakes, still blocked Kyiv’s response to the attack on the hospital. He failed to lift a US ban on Ukraine using US-made long-range missiles to attack aerodromes from which the attacks were launched, deep inside Russian territory.
In other words, Russia can still destroy Ukraine’s civil infrastructure, electricity grid, thermal heating system – and hospitals, schools and markets – at will.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg could hardly contain his anger at the US restrictions during a press conference at the end of the summit. “There is no question that Ukraine has the right to hit legitimate targets on the aggressor’s territory,” he said.
Since Russia has opened a new front by sending thousands of rocket bombs to Ukrainian cities, the only way to stop this aggression is at its source.
The US announced a new NATO aid package for Patriot air defense systems and US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. But here again, US and NATO policies are too little, too late.
Kyiv, which lacks a viable air force, has called on the Patriots to protect their cities since the war began. While Western allies have a reported 100 systems, so far only Germany has delivered – sending two – while the US contributed one.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Washington that seven new Patriot systems are the minimum needed to protect major cities. But at the summit, Germany, Romania and Washington offered only one new Patriot system. Others will be cobbled together from parts of Europe, and other Italian systems will help NATO deliver five in all.
But here’s the kicker: Israel has eight Patriot systems, on loan from the US, which has been put into mothballs because it considers old technology, long replaced by Israeli defense. However, the White House has failed to press Jerusalem to return some or all of it to Washington for forwarding to Ukraine.
As for the F-16s, they came from the Netherlands and Denmark, and have repeatedly promised for months, if not years. (The long-delayed US green light is because the planes are US-made.) But the Pentagon continues, surprisingly, slow-moving training for competent, English-speaking Ukrainian pilots, with only a dozen prepared to fly the distance. more number of planes. This is absurd. However, the White House has failed to prioritize training for Ukrainians. It also does not allow retired US pilots to conduct training abroad.
“If NATO is not ready to protect us, and to take us into the alliance, then we ask NATO to give us everything so that we can protect ourselves,” Zelenskyy told me in a recent interview in Kyiv. Buoyed by White House fears, that didn’t happen last week.
European leaders have repeatedly stated at the summit that they want to see Washington sooner. Countries bordering Russia know the danger: the Kremlin has pursued cyberwarfare, sabotage and assassinations in many of its countries, and in its waters.
In another bad message from Putin, CNN reported last week that the US and Germany foiled a Russian assassination plot to kill Armin Papperger, the head of Europe’s largest arms factory, Rheinmetall, which sold critical 155 mm artillery guns to Kyiv, and will soon. start production in Ukraine.
Despite all the uncertainty, there was good news at the summit.
The event shows that Putin’s violent efforts to destroy his peaceful neighbor have revived and consolidated the alliance – along with the leadership of Biden.
Two-thirds of NATO countries now meet the 2% floor on military spending, and, for the first time, there are some serious efforts to unite defense production and innovation of the allies.
Moreover, contrary to Trump’s claims, the European Union and individual member states have provided more military and economic aid to Ukraine than the United States. And $40 billion in annual military aid will now be channeled proportionally by member states through NATO to try to Trump-proof cuts in US military aid.
But the Europeans don’t have the military power, or heavy defense production, to help Ukraine defeat Putin if the White House refuses to face Ukraine’s current urgency or if Trump wins and cuts aid.
Biden – whatever happens around his candidacy – can still justify the missed opportunity at the summit. The White House’s current policy of helping Ukraine hold the line — without providing the weapons it needs to win — won’t work.
As the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis said in Washington: “The blind think that Putin will stop and there will be negotiations. He will continue. He did not stop in 2014 (after Putin invaded Crimea). We are in this for the long run. We must create a clear deterrence…let’s let Ukraine attack them.
To ignore Putin’s sadistic challenge to the children’s hospital is to encourage Russian escalation. For Kyiv to respond is to prevent escalation by making it clear that Moscow will pay a strong penalty.
If Biden admits the truth – and limits the ban on long-range ATACMS missiles, while taking Patriot missile batteries from Israel – Democrats can show their foreign policy wisdom in November, compared to Trump’s Putin blindness.
But failing the White House’s sense of urgency, most of the Ukrainian think tanks and lawmakers I spoke to at the summit have left Washington worried about Biden’s limitations and the possibility of Putin’s victory, helped by Trump.
They are determined to fight on, despite the weakness of the US, but more than a little afraid.
