NATO Scrambles to Reload Ukraine’s Air Defense

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Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: NATO is looking to beef up Ukraine’s air defense, Republican national security leaders in Congress are getting behind Trump, and the U.S. intelligence community remains confident that Hamas used a Gaza hospital as a command post.

NATO Goes All in on Ukraine Defense

You know how the saying goes: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

And NATO, long derided for not being tough enough in standing up to Russian aggression, is now trying to do exactly that, just as the Kremlin launched its largest missile attack on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of the Eastern European country nearly two years ago.

On Wednesday, the 31-nation alliance said that its procurement branch would help a consortium of European countries buy up to 1,000 Patriot interceptor missiles, the U.S.-made air defenses that now ring Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv. The deal could be worth up to $5.5 billion, according to The Associated Press.

“This kind of arrangement between U.S. and European industries on their own, particularly on something as important to Ukraine as Patriot systems, that’s a big deal,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official.

The news follows a recent hailstorm of Russian bombs, rockets, and cruise missiles aimed at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in recent days. The Kremlin is drawing from its well-stocked precision-guided arsenal, which piled up over the summer as the Russians favored dumb bombs over smarter ones.

Now, they’re committing those saved-up smart bombs to attack Ukrainian cities. More than 150 Russian drone and missile strikes across Ukraine on Dec. 29 killed at least 30 people. Russia then pounded Kyiv and Kharkiv with 35 Shahed suicide drones and 99 missiles on Tuesday, even forcing next-door neighbor Poland to scramble its F-16 fighter jets. As of Tuesday night, Russia had launched 500 missiles and drones into Ukraine over just the past five days.

Patriot systems are seen as a crucial tool for Ukraine to keep defending its skies from Russian missiles for the long winter ahead, and agreements to produce these missiles in bulk will end up being much cheaper and more economical than having individual countries order their own shipments of Patriot missiles in a piecemeal way, Townsend said.

This also offers a glimmer of good news after a rough few months for Ukraine, with major new tranches of U.S. military aid being held up in Congress and open questions about whether the West is tiring of continuing to supply Ukraine as the war drags into another year.

Back in action. This isn’t the first time in recent months that NATO has tried to flex its procurement muscles. The alliance is also pushing for members to ramp up production of 155 mm artillery shells and further consolidate around the shell as the standard round in Europe. Ukraine has fired so many of these Western-provided artillery rounds that, in many cases, they have warped the barrels of the weapons.

But increasing demand is also driving up the cost for many of the weapons that the Ukrainians and their European suppliers want. Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, told Reuters in October that the price of a single 155 mm artillery shell had quadrupled since Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine began in February 2022, to nearly $8,500 a pop.

And by November, the European Union had shipped only 300,000 artillery shells to Ukraine, far short of its goal of sending a million to Kyiv by March 2024.

Supporting homegrown efforts. Then there’s the Ukrainian defense industry itself, which has redoubled its production efforts now that U.S.-provided military aid has begun drying up. (The U.S. government is also just 15 days from the possibility of a partial shutdown unless Congress passes another continuing resolution to keep the lights on.) White House national security spokesman John Kirby indicated on Wednesday that the United States is not going to send another drawdown package to Ukraine until Congress coughs up new funding.

In the meantime, the United States has helped the Ukrainians cobble together “FrankenSAMs”—the acronym stands for surface-to-air missiles, the kind that knock Russian projectiles out of the sky—using Soviet-era launchers and newer American missiles.

But Ukraine’s defense industry alone can’t sustain a war against Russia’s massive, albeit mismanaged and poorly run, military juggernaut. And on Wednesday, the British Defense Ministry’s intelligence wing said that Russian long-range strikes are now primarily aimed at Ukraine’s defense industry, not at energy infrastructure like last year’s winter attacks.

“There are sufficient resources to provide Ukraine with the help we’re requesting,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. “All the West has to do is to start believing in itself, in its capacity to prevail.”

Let’s Get Personnel

China finally has a new defense chief. Adm. Dong Jun has been named defense minister, after the mysterious and abrupt sacking of Li Shangfu from the post back in October.

Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress appear to be closing ranks around former U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection bid. Ahead of the Iowa caucuses later this month, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer have both endorsed Trump, who faces 91 separate charges across four criminal trials, per a CNN tally.

On the Senate side, Sens. Roger Wicker, Rick Scott, and Kevin Cramer on the Senate Armed Services Committee—who have all previously backed U.S. military aid to Ukraine—have now all endorsed Trump.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden has tapped Irving W. Bailey II to sit on the board of directors of the Development Finance Corporation.

On the Button 

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

High confidence. The U.S. intelligence community is “confident” that Hamas and other Palestinian militants used parts of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital to support the fight against Israel before the complex was raided in mid-November. A declassified assessment that was shared with U.S. media outlets declared that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both used Al-Shifa Hospital to house command infrastructure, store weapons, and hold “at least a few” hostages, before the Israel Defense Forces cleared the facility in a Nov. 15 raid. That operation, which killed at least 40 people inside the hospital, according to human rights group Amnesty International, drew widespread criticism from human rights organizations and others who say the hospital should have been protected under international law. Hospitals have special legal protections in conflict zones under international law, though there are exceptions if hospitals are used for military purposes.

But the assessment did not go so far as to back up Israel’s claim that the facility was the key coordinating point for Palestinian militants fending off the Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip; nor did the U.S. intelligence community provide any new evidence to support its assessment. Thousands of people fled to Al-Shifa Hospital during Israel’s siege, which left more than 7,000 people and patients trapped inside at the time of the raid. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis inside Gaza has gone from bad to worse, as 22,000 people have reportedly been killed since the Israel-Hamas war began.

The enemy of my enemy… Pakistan this week announced it would acquire Chinese fifth-generation fighter jets for its air force in an intriguing geopolitical signal. Pakistan will acquire FC-31s, China’s answer to the U.S.-made F-35 fighter jet, though details on the timeline of the procurement are scarce so far, as Defense News reports. But the announcement still represents a significant win for Beijing in South Asia. China has been pushing its own high-end military systems as a competitor to Western arms sales abroad for its own geopolitical clout and influence. It’s no secret that the United States is heavily courting Pakistan’s neighbor and archrival, India, in its global game of competition with China, adding a fresh layer of intrigue to this particular arms sale.

Wrong target. Bans on the State Department giving posts to people believed to be vulnerable to foreign influence is preventing Asian American diplomats—especially those with family members in or ties to China—from serving in critical positions across the agency where they could provide linguistic or cultural expertise, according to a New York Times investigation. About 625 State Department employees are currently under the ban that counterintelligence officials can put on diplomats for potential harmful foreign ties. That’s despite U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announcing an end to the practice and the State Department lifting about 1,400 assignment restrictions since Biden took office three years ago.

Snapshot 

A picture taken in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on Dec. 18, 2023, shows an Israeli soldier playing violin on a tank, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas.Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

Put on Your Radar

Thursday, Jan. 4: Blinken begins a multiday trip to the Middle East and Europe, including stops in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece.

Sunday, Jan. 7: Bangladesh holds a general election.

Wednesday, Jan. 10: Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo is set to begin a multiday visit to China.

Quote of the Week

“This is Petropavlovka: the street is fucking gone. And here is Yarik’s house. Hello, Yarik, your house is no longer there.”

—After Russian warplanes apparently mistakenly bombed Petropavlovka, a village on Russian soil, a man reported on the damage in a Telegram post reported by the Financial Times. No one was killed in the strike, which the Russian Defense Ministry described as an “abnormal discharge” of weapons.

This Week’s Most Read

• 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2024 by Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood
• Elections to Watch in 2024 by Allison Meakem
• The Field of Geopolitics Offers Both Promise and Peril by Hal Brands

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Procrastination nation. Vietnam has submitted a list of eight commitments on human rights reforms that it plans to implement by Dec. 31—in the year 2099, as Newsweek and Radio Free Asia report.

The most divisive issue of our time. Via CNN: “Italy divided over new pineapple pizza.” (Author’s note: Putting pineapple on pizza should be considered a criminal offense.)