On the menu today: As of this writing, I’ve experienced another thankfully quiet few days in Kyiv. Today, a look at why the indefinite postponement of Ukraine’s parliamentary and presidential elections is a necessary concession to the realities of the war; a slew of our NATO allies get more arms to Ukraine, amid some somewhat more positive signs from House Speaker Mike Johnson; and Russia decides to start messing with the GPSs of planes flying over the Baltic Sea, including commercial airliners.
In Ukraine, Elections Will Have to Wait
Kyiv, Ukraine — Had Russia not chosen to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine would be approaching a presidential election right now; the election was scheduled for March 31. But on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian government enacted martial law, and the Ukrainian constitution does not allow elections to be held when martial law is in effect.
Martial law gives the Ukrainian government far-reaching wartime powers. Where I am in Kyiv, there’s still a curfew from midnight to 5 a.m., when all citizens are expected to be in their homes, hotels, or otherwise indoors. (The Ukrainians use this time to move military equipment around without the fear of some citizen recording it on their cell phone and posting it onto the internet. Nighttime curfews are also useful for rooting out saboteurs.)
In addition to the presidential election, the war has indefinitely postponed parliamentary elections that had been scheduled for October 2023. The outlook for the local elections scheduled for 2025 isn’t looking so optimistic, either.
Masha Gessen of the New Yorker wrote earlier this year, “It is a commonplace to say that Ukraine is waging a war not only for its survival but for the future of democracy in Europe and beyond. In the meantime, in Ukraine, democracy is largely suspended.”
But there are good reasons not to hold elections during an ongoing shooting war and partial occupation of your nation. Roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s pre-invasion territory is behind enemy lines; obviously, those regions could not participate in any Ukrainian election. This would be akin to running an American presidential election with only 40 of the 50 states able to participate. Distributing and collecting ballots from the troops in the field, under fire, would represent its own slew of logistical challenges.
Sunday night, I chatted with Miroslava Luzina, a translator and independent political consultant, who described how attempting to hold a regular election during this war would simply make the Russian invaders’ goal of killing Ukrainians easier.
“If the Russians made an effort to target a wake with a missile in a village where 50 people are gathered to mourn a fallen soldier, what do you think will happen to polling stations?” Luzina asked. “The ballot boxes need to be under constant supervision by observers, there are procedures — if there is an air-raid alarm, and everyone is running to the shelters, what happens then? There are not that many places that have both a good basement or good type of a shelter, and that are also suitable to be a polling station. There are all these logistical questions. It would be endangering people, because Russia would target gatherings of these people, especially when Ukrainians are doing the sorts of things that make Ukraine a country.”
When interviewing a Ukrainian, my first question is usually, “How are you doing?” Luzina’s answer was vivid, and, I suspect, not all that atypical for this country.
“From time to time, I wake up in the night, not with the typical nightmare, where you are running from someone or something, but I wake up simply overwhelmed by the feeling of grief,” Luzina told me. “Because every day there is news of people dying over there, that city, that city. . . . I just came back from Odesa, where just a couple of nights ago, a ballistic missile killed, I think it’s up to 20 people.” (Indeed, the death toll was at least 20, and the attack wounded more than 70 people.)
“There is a feeling of general uncertainty — basically, at this point, you don’t know whether you can continue to build a life in this country or not,” Luzina lamented. “If Russia keeps even a square meter of Ukrainian soil, it means that it [the invasion] was has worked for it [Russia]. And it will come back. Even if they are beaten back at this point, a lot but not fully, this means that their efforts have worked, and they will come back with more.”
If the U.S. Comes Through, Ukraine Will Amass a Sizable Arsenal
In Friday’s edition of the Jolt, I mentioned the assessment of former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who was more optimistic than many about Ukraine’s fight in the year to come. Herbst also called our attention to some good news from our European allies, as opposed to some other experts I’ve interviewed recently.
“The real heroes of the Munich Security Conference were Czech president [Petr] Pavel, who announced the finding of something like seven-hundred thousand rounds of ammo on world markets, and Danish PM Frederiksen, who said she was sending all, or nearly all, her country’s weapons to Ukraine because it is fighting Denmark’s war,” Herbst told me.
Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen indeed said that her country would be sending all of its available artillery to Ukraine:
“We decided to donate our entire artillery,” Mette Frederiksen said at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting that other European nations should follow suit. “I’m sorry to say friends, there is still ammunition in stock in Europe. This is not only a question about production because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have our defenses that we don’t have to use at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine,” she said. “We have to do more.”
And separately, Frederiksen said the F-16s are on the way, and could be flying over Ukrainian skies by summer or possibly even earlier.
“Since then, more than ten countries have promised to buy the ammo,” Herbst continued. “If this happens — and I think it is starting to — that would be an immediate boost for Ukraine and limit for at least a few months the damage caused by naifs in the House who do not understand that Russia threatens the U.S. and call us its number one adversary.”
There’s an alternative to countries sending Ukraine arms from their own stockpiles; the Czechs say that they’ve identified and secured significant stockpiles of arms from third countries that they will purchase and deliver to Ukraine:
“First deliveries from the so-called ‘Czech ammunition initiative’ can be expected in Ukraine in June at the latest,” National Security Adviser Tomas Pojar told Reuters. . . .
Prague located 800,000 artillery rounds in third countries earlier this year to supply to Ukraine and says it raised enough funding from allies to purchase a first batch of 300,000 on March 8.
In addition, Portugal’s defense minister, Helena Carreiras, announced that her country pledged to contribute $119 million to the purchase of large-caliber artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
Earlier this month, a Russian missile exploded close to a convoy carrying Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, during a deadly attack on the city of Odesa. Go figure, the Greeks didn’t appreciate a Russian missile coming uncomfortably close to killing the head of their government, and last week, they announced a large new arms shipment to Ukraine:
Greece has been modernizing its army and has already provided older weapons systems to Ukraine’s military aid. These include BMP-1A1 infantry fighting vehicles, RPG-18 grenade launchers, Kalashnikov rifles, and 122mm rocket artillery rounds. Additionally, Greece is contributing to the training of Ukrainian military personnel, including pilots for F-16 jet fighters, Special Forces, and Leopard 2 MBT troops.
According to Greek officials, rockets, projectiles, bullets, and howitzers are among the supplies that Ukraine urgently needs. The planned delivery will include 2,000 5-inch Zuni rockets, 180 2.75-inch anti-tank rockets, 90,000 90mm projectiles, 4 million bullets, and 70 US-made M114A1 howitzers from Greek army stocks.
And finally, last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico that he expects to pass a future Ukraine-assistance bill with Democratic votes, and that aid to Ukraine could come up under suspension of the rules, which would require a two-thirds majority of the House. In February, the Senate passed a bill allocating $95.3 billion in foreign aid, including $60 billion to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance, and $4.8 billion to support “regional partners in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Put together the Danish effort, the Czech effort, the Greek contributions, and the long-delayed billion or so from the U.S. — and maybe those long-awaited F-16s — and suddenly the Ukrainian arsenal looks healthier for the summer.
The Axis of You-Know-Whats Strikes Again
Meanwhile, in the Baltics, apparently around Christmas, the Russians started jamming the GPSs of all kinds of aircraft, including commercial passenger airliners:
For more than a month, aircraft flying in the Baltic region have been experiencing varying degrees of interference with GPS signals, according to public aircraft tracking databases. In some instances, GPS receivers appear to have been electronically captured, or “spoofed” into showing the aircraft miles off its intended route.
While the jamming and spoofing is hardly new, some level of interference has been evident in the region almost every day, and it has periodically been widespread and significant. Previous reports have identified Russia as almost certainly behind the activity, in support of its invasion of Ukraine and in an effort to harass NATO nations.
Such jamming presents a risk to thousands of commercial aircraft, and as international pressure has so far failed to halt the interference, it’s time for NATO to act — proportionally.
On Dec. 25 and 26 a wide swath of northern Poland and southern Sweden was impacted. The next week, on New Year’s Eve, aircraft across a large area of southeastern Finland reported disruptions. On Jan. 10, 13 and 16 the northern half of Poland was the primary target. On the 19, southern Sweden and northern Poland felt the effects. Estonia and Latvia were the targets most recently on Jan. 24.
Earlier this year, the plane carrying the United Kingdom defense secretary Grant Shapps experienced this GPS jamming while he was returning from Poland to oversee a NATO exercise.
Those of us with long enough memories may recall Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and Korean Airlines 007. No matter who’s running the show in Moscow, the Russian government is never that helpful when it comes to flying the friendly skies.
ADDENDUM: Here’s a story from last week I forgot to share. I began this trip by flying from Washington to London. After meeting up with my friend and traveling companion, having my conversation with David Knowles and Kyle Orton, and an overnight stay, we took an Uber to Heathrow International Airport. And as you’d suspect, we talked a lot about the war, foreign policy, U.S. politics, etc.
At the end of the ride, our driver turned around and told us he had immigrated to the United Kingdom from Afghanistan, and asked, “Why does the U.S. sanction Afghanistan while simultaneously providing aid to Afghanistan?” (The U.S. has provided $2 billion in aid since the Taliban reconquered the country in August 2021. For what it’s worth, the officials from the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development insist that aid is rigorously monitored to prevent financial benefits from reaching the Taliban. And the U.S. sanctions the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, but has no “sanctions that prohibit the export or reexport of goods or services to Afghanistan, moving or sending money into and out of Afghanistan, or activities in Afghanistan, provided that such transactions or activities do not involve sanctioned individuals.”
Still, it was easy to see why our driver perceived the U.S. as simultaneously trying to make life harder and easier for the Taliban.
My driver, in a foreign land, was offering a cogent assessment of the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy. I felt like asking, “Did you just give a ride to Thomas Friedman or something?”