As Russia heavily bombarded Ukraine’s cities during the past week, Kyiv’s two most cautious wartime allies appeared to overcome their inhibitions in helping Ukraine defend itself.
US President Donald Trump on Monday [July 7] said he would resume military aid shipments to Ukraine after his defence secretary suspended them last week.
“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to,” Trump told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting. “They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.”
Observers have claimed that over the past week, Russia has twice broken its war record for the largest combined strikes against Ukraine.
On Friday, Russia launched 550 air strikes overnight, Ukraine said, including 539 drones and 11 missiles – its biggest strike to date. Ukraine’s Air Force said it neutralised 478 drones and two Iskander-K cruise missiles.
Then on Wednesday, Russia launched 741 air attacks on Ukraine overnight, comprised of 728 Shahed kamikaze drones and a lethal cocktail of missiles. Ukraine claimed to have repelled 711 drones and seven Iskander-K cruise missiles.
The success rate could suggest that Ukraine is far from running out of critical components in its air defence.
That impression was strengthened on Thursday, when Russia launched 397 drones, eight Iskander-M ballistic missiles, six Kh-101 cruise missiles and four S-300/400 guided missiles.
Ukraine’s Air Force neutralised or shot down all the Iskanders, all the Kh-101s, and 382 drones.
The only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal that can knock ballistic missiles out of the sky is the US-made Patriot system.
But Moscow’s rising aggression is not the only factor in Trump’s apparent change of heart.
The US leader had suspended all military aid to Ukraine in February, fulfilling a Russian condition for peace talks.
Although that did not work, for months, Trump insisted on appeasing Moscow. But after at least two disappointing phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his tone has changed.
Putin on Friday told Trump by phone that “Russia will achieve its goals” in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, “We get a lot of b******* thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Last month at The Hague, during the annual NATO summit, Trump said he found Putin “misguided,” after a phone call, adding he was “very surprised” the Russian leader had not agreed on peace terms.
Putin’s right-hand man, the deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, this week said Trump was “riding his favourite political roller coaster again”, oscillating between helping Ukraine and not helping it.
“How should we treat this?” he asked on his Telegram messaging service channel. “Business as usual.”
Ukrainians, too, seemed unimpressed by Trump’s u-turn.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to sense that Trump’s conversion may be real.
On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, “Today, I instructed the minister of defence and the commander-in-chief to intensify all contacts with the American side.”
“We currently have all the necessary political statements and decisions and we must implement them as quickly as possible to protect our people and positions,” he said.
What does Zelenskyy want?
Zelenskyy has launched a programme called Build with Ukraine, which has secured co-production of critical systems with various European partners, including Norway and the United Kingdom.
Ukraine supplies battlefield testing, and partners provide finance. Both sides supply technology and production capacity.
Ukraine sees this as an ideal marriage of money and technology that enables Ukraine to acquire effective weapons quickly and cheaply.
Zelenskyy now wants to extend such partnerships to US weapons companies, which supply 43 percent of the world’s defence exports.
On Friday, Zelenskyy signed a contract with US drone manufacturer Swift Beat to produce “hundreds of thousands of drones” this year and more next year.
Ukraine has begun to make strides in downing Russian Shahed kamikaze drones using interceptor drones.
“Interceptor drones demonstrated important performance today,” Zelenskyy said on Friday following Russia’s barrage. “Dozens of Shaheds were taken down specifically by interceptors. We are scaling this up to the hilt.”
Zelenskyy has also said he wants more Patriot launch systems, more Patriot interceptor missiles, and long-range attack missiles that can reach deep inside Russia.
Germany, Ukraine’s other cautious ally, may be stepping in.
Axios reported on Tuesday that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in talks with Trump to co-finance a Patriot battery for Ukraine. There is not yet agreement. Merz wants to pay for a new battery to be shipped from the US to Ukraine. Trump suggests shipping a German one and splitting the cost.
Merz has also overcome his predecessor’s caution about sending Ukraine 1,000km-range (621-mile-range) Taurus cruise missiles, which carry large 450kg (992lb) warheads and are hard to intercept because they travel at high speed.
Ukraine wants them to destroy Russian weapons factories, such as the one at Alabuga that manufactures Shahed drones, and is currently being expanded.
Merz said on Tuesday that he discussed with Zelenskyy the issue of training the Ukrainian military to handle Taurus cruise missiles.
Russia has repeatedly threatened Germany with consequences if it supplies Ukraine with Taurus missiles.
Germany last week also signed a contract to finance the production of more than 500 Antonov-196 long-range drones for Ukraine, part of a 9-billion-euro ($10.6bn) military aid package this year – the largest in Europe.
Zelenskyy also wants increased sanctions against Russia, and Merz is assuming a leading role in overcoming the objections of two European Union members, Hungary and Slovakia.
The EU has proposed an 18th package of sanctions that would eliminate its last remaining $23bn of energy purchases from Russia.
Slovakia vetoed it last month.
“The entire Slovak industry, including many German companies, depends on Russian energy supplies, as there are currently no alternatives. We are working to solve this problem, and I am involved in these efforts,” Merz said in a TV interview last week.
Despite Merz’s assurances, Slovakia’s permanent EU representative again vetoed the package on Wednesday, diplomats said. The package was to be discussed again on Friday.
Yet this front-and-centre posture to help Ukraine marks a change of policy for Germany, which under its former chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was loath even to raise its own defence spending to 2 percent of GDP.
With Scholz’s support in the Bundestag, Merz has now pledged 3.5 percent by the end of the decade.
Russia’s travails
On the front lines, Russia continued its creeping advance, taking the villages of Puddubnoye and Sobolevka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Sunday, and Tolstoy on Wednesday. But its most telling move was the occupation of Razine on July 3.
“Russian advances west and northwest of Razine most immediately support the envelopment of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad – an operational objective that Russian forces have been pursuing over the last 18 months,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Russia also occupied the village of Melovoye in Kharkiv last week.
Russian officials are likely to be worried about manpower losses, however.
Ukrainian commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, said Russian casualties amounted to 32,420 last month alone.
Medvedev said the pace of recruitment was satisfactory, with 210,000 people signing contracts with the Russian military this year, and another 18,000 signing up as volunteers.
Both losses and recruitment balanced at roughly a thousand people a day, but Russia is looking to boost the number of its forces.
On Monday, Putin signed a law allowing non-Russian citizens to serve in the Russian military. It was expedited “in order to take urgent additional measures to restaff the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”, according to TASS.
CNN, citing Ukrainian and Western intelligence, reported that North Korea may send an additional 25,000 to 30,000 troops to Ukraine, in addition to the 11,000 it sent last year.
