We set out across the Indo-Pacific in August to assess U.S. military readiness and consult with allies. In the Philippines, Palau and Taiwan, we found partners determined to resist Chinese coercion and willing to share the burden.
In Taiwan we spoke with President Lai Ching-tse and senior officials. They understand the gravity of the threat and are responding with urgency to meet it. Mr. Lai has committed to increasing defense spending and mobilizing the public behind a resilience plan.
Russia fired off a fresh barrage of strikes at Ukraine on New Year’s Eve, launching nearly 100 Shahed loitering munitions against cities across the country. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said their air defense forces had shot down 87 of the Iranian-made drones.
A 15-year-old boy was killed and seven people were wounded after debris from one of the drones that was downed hit a residential building in Odesa, the head of the regional administration said according to the Associated Press.
The latest holiday launch came on the heels of an air attack on Friday, during which the Ukrainian Air Force brought down 114 of 158 projectiles fired by Russia. Kyiv said Friday’s bombardment, the biggest of the war, had killed at least 45 people.
National unity took center stage during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year address to the nation, though the president only referenced the war obliquely. He praised Russian troops — but did not mention Ukraine by name, nor did he make direct reference to the so-called special military operation, Kremlin-speak for the war in Ukraine.
“What united us and unites us is the fate of the Fatherland, a deep understanding of the highest significance of the historical stage through which Russia is passing,” Putin said to the nation. Putin said Russia would never retreat and there was no force that could divide Russians and stop the country’s development, the AP reported citing state media.
On Saturday, Ukrainian strikes against Belgorod, a Russian city approximately 35 kilometers from the border, killed at least two dozen and wounded more than 100, according to regional Russian authorities — but the attack did not feature in Putin’s four-minute video message.
In his midnight address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked 676 days of war by commending the resilience of Ukraine’s citizens and soldiers and highlighting Ukraine’s invitation to join the European Union.
“We do not know for certain what the new year will bring us,” Zelenskyy said, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive largely stalled and the increasing likelihood of stalemate across the front. “But this year we can add: whatever it brings, we will be stronger.”
BRUSSELS — The EU will deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine — but not by the March deadline leaders had agreed, the CEO of the European Defence Agency Jiří Šedivý told POLITICO.
The agency has been at the heart of efforts to transform the bloc’s military industry by matching contractors with capitals in massive joint ammunition deals targeted at boosting local production and supplying arms to Ukraine.
The million shell target was decided by EU leaders last March to support Kyiv in its fight against invading Russian forces, but there were deep divisions over the success of the policy during Tuesday’s meeting of defense ministers in Brussels.
Some, like Germany Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, said the target wouldn’t be reached and questioned the sense of setting it in the first place, while others, like Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, said the bloc was capable of producing enough ammunition — as long as governments sign contracts with arms-makers.
The EDA chief leans toward a more optimistic assessment.
“The target of 1 million will be achieved — maybe even beyond that — but indeed, the timeline is too ambitious,” Šedivý said in an interview just hours after meeting defense ministers in his role as the chief of the bloc’s technical agency.
So far, EU countries have dispatched around 300,000 shells to Ukraine, with the EDA running a second track to jointly procure ammo to refill national stocks as well as provide further support to Ukraine.
In October, the agency said seven member countries agreed to place orders for critical 155 millimeter ammunition under a fast-track joint procurement scheme.
While the EDA won’t disclose the total volume of those contracts, Šedivý said that, coupled with national orders from larger countries like Germany, France and Sweden, it would add up to “lower 100,000s of ammunition” which would still put the bloc well beneath the 1 million mark.
“The orders are just being placed,” Šedivý, a former Czech defense minister, said. “The industry is just being engaged.”
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Tuesday at the ministerial that contractors should be urged to boost deliveries to countries supplying Ukraine by curbing exports to non-EU clients.
But that’s easier said than done.
Some, like Germany Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, said the target wouldn’t be reached and questioned the sense of setting it in the first place | Tobia Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s quite unrealistic to imagine that customers outside the EU would accept any reprioritization,” Šedivý said.
Instead, governments need to start committing to contracts running “five to 10 years” to spur investment in the EU, Šedivý added, in the same way that healthcare firms got bulk orders to build up stocks of COVID masks and testing kits during the pandemic.
“We will not achieve this [million rounds] target by March 2024, most probably,” he said. “But at the same time we are getting there.”
BERLIN — Facing war on two fronts — in Ukraine and in the Middle East — Kyiv is calling on Western democracies to ramp up investment in weapons, saying that arms factory output worldwide is falling miles short of what is needed.
In an interview, Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin told POLITICO Western countries needed to accelerate production of missiles, shells and military drones as close to frontlines as possible.
“The free world should be producing enough to protect itself,” Kamyshin said, on a mission to the German capital to persuade arms producers to invest in war-ravaged Ukraine. “That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe.”
Current factory capacity was woeful, he argued. “If you get together all the worldwide capacities for weapons production, for ammunition production, that will be not enough for this war,” said Kamyshin of the state of play along Ukraine’s more than 1,000 kilometers of active frontline.
As the Israel Defense Forces continue to pummel Gaza and fighting gathers pace along the contact line in Ukraine, armies are burning through ammunition at a rate not seen in decades. Policymakers are asking whether Western allies can support both countries with air defense systems and artillery at once.
The answer, says Kamyshin, is to start building out production facilities now. “What happens in Israel now shows and proves that the defense industry globally is a destination for investments for decades,” he said.
Since Russia’s war on Ukraine started in February 2022, western governments have been funneling arms to Kyiv. That includes hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other equipment.
But as the grind of war continues, Kyiv has changed tack — appointing Kamyshin, the former boss of Ukraine’s state railway — to the post of minister for strategic industries. Ukraine, formerly a major military hub in the Soviet Union, is now trying to increase output of armored vehicles, ammunition and air defense systems, he said, and wants Western partners to invest.
A key step is expected on Tuesday, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will announce a new joint venture between Rheinmetall and Ukroboronprom, a Ukrainian defense company, Kamyshin said.
In late September, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office gave the green light to the cooperation agreement after a review that found the proposed venture “does not result in any overlaps in terms of competition in Germany.”
Building local
Last March, EU countries pledged to send a millionartillery rounds to Ukraine over the following year as part of a program to lift production. Ukraine may need as much as 1.5 million shells annually to sustain its war effort, a daunting task that Kamyshin hopes he can help, at least partially, with domestic output.
In total, Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia. Combined with Soviet-era pieces in Ukrainian stocks prior to the Russian invasion, Kyiv has approximately 1,600 pieces of artillery in service — but must cover a massive front.
Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
And although the deepening of the German-Ukrainian defense relationship is a boon for Kyiv’s war effort, the enemy on the battlefield — Russia — can also leverage its own international relationships for war materiel, and has been quick to agree military hardware deals with the likes of Iran and North Korea.
Earlier this month, reports pointed out Pyongyang likely transferred a sizable shipment of artillery ammunition to Russia. The details of the deal are secret, but the shipment came on the heels of a visit to Pyongyang by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in turn made a trip to Russia by rail and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia previously struck a deal with Tehran for Iranian loitering munitions that hammered cities across Ukraine last winter in an intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure.
The increasingly international scope of sourcing for the war in Ukraine is not limited to non-NATO countries. Poland recently started taking delivery of tanks, howitzers, rocket launchers and light attack aircraft from South Korea, a nod to how quickly Seoul can ramp up production affordably.
For Kamyshin, the key was to make plans for the long term.
“This war can be for decades,” he said. “[The] Russians can come back always.”
BRUSSELS — Defense ministers flying into the Belgian capital for a NATO meeting starting Wednesday were expecting to spend their time backing Ukraine — instead, they find their intel briefings full of a region mostly forgotten in the past two years: the Middle East.
From the White House’s new military support for Israel to emergency meetings across European capitals, to a fumbled EU response to the crisis, NATO allies are grappling with a renewed sense of urgency over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend has led to the Israeli government’s vow of total retaliation in the Gaza Strip, with a record number of 300,000 reservists already drafted within 48 hours.
The timing is an inconvenience for the Ukrainians, who aim to galvanize further support from NATO countries in what will be the first defense ministers’ meeting following a NATO leaders’ summit in July that saw beefed-up pledges for Ukraine’s security and military support.
Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on foreign policy, acknowledged the “fears” among his compatriots over whether the West can stay focused on Russia’s invasion while also dealing with the ongoing Israeli-Hamas situation.
“I can only speak for myself. Yes, there are such fears,” Merezhko told POLITICO. “But, at the same time, I think that in the end it will not be a problem, because the USA is such a powerful country in economic and military terms.”
While Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is scheduled to get hours of attention, Israel is also expected to be discussed — at least on the sidelines.
“I would be surprised if the situation in the Middle East isn’t mentioned at the meeting,” said a NATO diplomat granted anonymity to speak freely. A second diplomat said they expected strong interest in what U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had to say.
The interest isn’t unusual because Israel has a longtime partnership with NATO, another diplomat pointed out, so it would only be “natural” for the alliance to be concerned about its next steps.
Just a week before the Hamas attack, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, visited Israel to meet with President Isaac Herzog and military officials. Bauer also visited the Gaza border crossing, where he praised the Israeli military’s “unique expertise in underground counterterrorism activity.”
While the line from the White House is that the United States can deal with two regional crises at the same time, domestic skeptics of helping Ukraine are already piling on.
“Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately,” Josh Hawley, a Republican senator allied with former President Donald Trump, said on social media.
Pledges for Kyiv
U.S. officials are trying to dispel Ukrainian concerns, pointing out that the two countries have differing needs because they face very different threats.
“On the question of whether or not U.S. support for Israel could possibly come at the expense of U.S. support for Ukraine, we don’t anticipate any major challenges in that regard,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters on Tuesday. “I suspect the United States will be able to stay focused on our partnership and commitment to Israel’s security, while also meeting our commitments and promise to continue supporting Ukraine as it defends its territory.”
Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend has led to the Israeli government’s vow of total retaliation in the Gaza Strip | Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images
“I think allies no doubt will want to talk about what happened in Israel and express their solidarity. We’ve seen all members of the alliance issue their own national statements — really in real time almost as the attack was ongoing. And I suspect that will be part of our conversation,” Smith said.
Ukraine still remains a key focus for this week’s NATO meeting.
It begins on Wednesday with the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a regular gathering of NATO and Ukrainian ministers to discuss what weapons to give Ukraine. It will be followed by the NATO-Ukraine Council meeting, a format that’s already in its fourth edition since it was created in July, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the NATO Summit in Lithuania.
“I anticipate that the emphasis will be mostly on air defense and ammunition although no doubt the Ukrainians will come in with a variety of other requests,” Smith said. “It always is an organic meeting where ministers step forward and offer assistance in real time.”
Shortly before the NATO meeting, Umerov, the Ukrainian defense minister, reached out to his Dutch counterpart, Kajsa Ollongren, on Ukraine’s “urgent needs” for air defense systems, long-range missiles and artillery. The Netherlands has also been leading on the F-16 fighter jet training for Ukraine’s pilots.
That’s a sign that the alliance can juggle both Ukraine and Israel, Ollongren told POLITICO.
“Splits? No. But I think of course there will also be attention and focus on Israel and how the situation is developing over there,” she said. “But I think it’s very important, it’s a good thing that we are meeting tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, to underline that the support for Ukraine is not affected.”
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of the Dutch defense minister’s name: it is Kajsa Ollongren.
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Veronika Melkozerova, Stuart Lau, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali
