Beside the fact that there are no legal obligations of any kind:
- Genocide Convention does not apply, clearly;
- Budapest Memorandum had no legal obligations to intervene (what has been done is way and beyond what any reasonable person should expect anyways);
- UN Charter? Common, let’s get serious.
But, what is it exactly “NATO nations” can do to intervene and “implement a humanitarian mission”? A serious questions. Any ideas are welcome because it is most certainly (very) slim pickings. It appears that the best idea is expressed by
Zelensky (bolding is mine):
[…]Our FREYJA can become a shared European system providing integrated protection. FREYJA will be quick to produce and battle-tested. Ukraine is capable of manufacturing both the missile itself and the launcher. The decisive factor is cooperation with those European countries and companies that have the radars, sensors, and everything else required for an effective anti-ballistic system.[…]
Here is the reality though: there are basically four nations that have their own developed anti-ballistic capabilities in this world. One is busy breaking the UN charter, among other things, in another part of the world, expending these very capabilities at an enormous rate. The other is China whose capabilities have not been proven in real-life applications and “does not apply”. The third is Israel that is pretty much in “does not apply” category too. Moreover, Israel’s case:
In 2023, the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham led an effort to protect Ukrainian civilians from Russian attacks by supporting the transfer of Iron Dome air defense batteries from the United States to Ukraine. But he encountered an obstacle: Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli prime minister vetoed the transfer by invoking the terms of a joint-production agreement that gives Israel final say over the system’s use even though the missile batteries in question were paid for by the U.S. government.
From the Washington Post, via the archive:
https://archive.is/L7dYf. On this note, quite a bit of outrage was expressed (aside from “how dare you!?” - insert Greta gif) about the US taxpayers’ funds that paid for it and Israel’s ability to veto or have a say at all. This is really weird stuff, in my opinion, but it is self-explanatory and for another thread (if any). Israel’s perspective is simple (relations with Russia aside): see my point about needing a group of leading mental health professionals when considering any serious tech (or, in this case, a sophisticated product) transfer to Ukraine. And Israel is 100% correct to deny such request, of course. Besides the point, this would have limited or no use to Ukraine anyway since there aren’t many (any?) interceptors for this system sitting around in the United States. Good enough for headlines though.
So the fourth and last country with proven capabilities in the field is the warring party on the other end of the conflict, the one that is causing the damage and suffering that the person cited above is “pleading” for help against.
Yeah, sure, there is also India… probably “not very effective” and “does not apply” either way.
So those “that have the radars, sensors, and everything else required for an
effective anti-ballistic system” that Ukraine supposedly partnered with simply do not exist. Chances are they won’t exist by the end of 2026 or beginning (or the end) of 2027 either. I briefly explained the reasons for that previously.
Someone mentioned Machiavelli’s Prince not long ago (I would, personally, lean to Hobbes, even Schmitt, but Prince certainly works too), but there is also quite a bit of Tocqueville has been involved from the very beginning (ie compassion as a standard to express moral superiority, we all must care, etc). Another example:
There is got to be a good “what about” here I can use… I still do not follow the thought process behind the UA attacks on Wildberries, Sea of Azov, civilian transport and such, Kazakh (read American) oil assets, etc. Ukraine does not have escalation dominance here. There is nothing Ukraine can do that Russia cannot replicate and then some. The person cited at the top of this post mentions “including nuclear” in brackets, referring to infrastructure and protecting. What are they referring to? This (?):
The chief engineer at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been killed by a Ukrainian drone near the station, the head of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Wednesday.
Alexei Likhachev said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone had struck a service car between the plant's site and the town of Enerhodar, killing the engineer, Alexander Yakovlev, and the driver.[…]
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, condemned the incident, while making no specific mention of Ukraine or Russia.
Grossi said it "represents an unacceptable attack on the plant and its management, seriously threatening nuclear safety."
From Reuters, July 15:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...gineer-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-2026-07-15/
So much nonsense. Saw today an article by some Ukrainian voices asking for
[…]The Economist to provide Ukrainian authors with equivalent space—not in the letters to the editor section, but in a format proportionate to that given to Melnichenko. This is not a request for a favor. It is a demand for editorial consistency.
Imagine, UA asking for an equivalent space! Laughing. And the choice of avenue to express themselves was the National Interest too (laughing again):
Why Did ‘The Economist’ Platform a Russian Oligarch?. This is a response to the Economist article, by the way, by Melnichenko that, I think,
@personaldesas cited here not that long ago. I guess the authors may have missed all the space that had been provided to the “Ukrainian authors” the past few years, filled with propaganda and nonsense that should be way beyond any reasonable person’s comfort level. But hey, I guess, Tocqueville keeps knocking.
Another new and current trend seems to be the provision of Starlink in Russia in order to destroy the Russian ballistic missile launchers (just an example, but there are couple of article I want to cite and talk about… some other time):
There must be some new/next wunderwaffe I have not heard off before that is yet to be introduced because the Starlink has been fully functional above Crimea for years and Russia still launches Iskander-Ms, as well as other missiles, from the peninsula. Crimea that is more open and visible, with limited resources, still launches ballistic missiles to Ukraine. If they think they will do better in Kursk, Bryansk, etc with these… Good luck and godspeed, as the saying goes.
I also wonder if the thought of Russia having many more launchers than the missiles they can launch had ever bothered anyone when contemplating this strategy. Most recent reported (by Ukrainians) production says 66 Iskanders per month, or 2.2 missiles per day. The most ballistic Iskanders sent to Ukraine in one raid was 30-some, I believe (and the number is a rarity), which would require 15 launchers, but the attack didn’t last minutes, so there are loaders involved as well. Anyway, something tells me that launchers are not the bottleneck here. But not to worry!
All is going to be well soon enough… I want to talk about domination in the Black Sea as well, but this is for another time, perhaps.
www.bbc.com
apnews.com
www.jpost.com
www.theguardian.com
www.twz.com