Open Threads

.@ZelenskyyUa
Today, a Ukrainian battle flag from Bakhmut is flying over Vilnius. The Battle for Bakhmut is one of the most defining battles for freedom in Europe, and will be remembered as such by our children and grandchildren. This battle flag from Bakhmut reassures… pic.twitter.com/Wqxa9wYMRa

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 11, 2023

@ZelenskyyUa

Today, a Ukrainian battle flag from Bakhmut is flying over Vilnius. The Battle for Bakhmut is one of the most defining battles for freedom in Europe, and will be remembered as such by our children and grandchildren. This battle flag from Bakhmut reassures Lithuanians that you will never again have to fight against russian soldiers, either under the Vilnius TV tower or anywhere else in the capital of your country.

"NATO will give Ukraine security; Ukraine will make the alliance stronger," Zelensky tells a rally in Vilnius. He brought with him a Ukrainian flag flown by the Edelweiss 10th Mountain Assault Brigade during the battle of Bakhmut that was raised over Vilnius. https://t.co/4e2DeGqQWM

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 11, 2023

NATO did exactly what we expected they were going to do. They punted. The Financial Times has details:

Nato leaders have declared they are prepared for Ukraine to ultimately join the military alliance, in a carefully hedged statement that drew immediate condemnation from Kyiv for its lack of a firm timeframe.

A summit communiqué agreed on Tuesday pledges to “extend an invitation” to Ukraine to join the alliance when “allies agree and conditions are met”.

Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general, said the commitment would streamline the accession process and make Ukraine’s membership dependent simply on a political decision. “This will change Ukraine’s membership path from a two-step process to a one-step process,” he said.

But Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately hit out at the 31-member alliance for negotiating the text without Kyiv at the table.

“It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to Nato nor to make it a member of the alliance . . . For Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror,” he said, ahead of arriving at the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Separately, the G7 group of industrialised countries continued negotiations on an overarching package to support Ukraine “as long as it takes”, which they hope to announce as soon as the Nato summit is over.

The summit has been dominated by how to respond to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The communiqué states that Kyiv’s “future is in Nato” but provides no timeline for its accession.

US President Joe Biden signalled Washington’s support for the compromise text, speaking beside Stoltenberg. “We agree on the language that we proposed and you proposed relative to the future of Ukraine being able to join Nato,” Biden said.

But Zelenskyy said it was “unprecedented and absurd when [a] timeframe is not set, neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership”, and also attacked Nato’s “vague conditions” for inviting Kyiv.

The compromise over the text had aimed to show Ukraine’s membership would be a potentially fast-tracked political decision that would bypass Nato’s formal accession process while nodding to US and German concerns about appearing to lower the bar for entry.

The issue of how to acknowledge Ukraine’s membership ambitions as it defends itself against Russian aggression has exposed divisions within Nato in weeks of intense negotiations, with the US and Germany wary of implying that Kyiv’s membership is inevitable without conditions attached.

On the other side, mainly eastern European members, with the backing of France and the UK, had called for the word “invitation” to be included in the statement and for an acknowledgment that it would be a political, not technical decision to invite Ukraine to join.

Dmitry Peskov, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told reporters that any move to speed up Ukraine’s admission into Nato would be “potentially very dangerous for European security”, according to Interfax.

“This carries a lot of risks and the people who will make this decision should admit that,” he said.

The whole point here is TO NOT GIVE MOSCOW A VOTE!!!!!

There is more at the link.

Here’s Gideon Rachman’s take: (emphasis mine)

“Holding Nato together is really critical,” says Joe Biden. But the unity of Nato’s 31 members will be put to its biggest test since the beginning of the Ukraine war, at the organisation’s summit in Lithuania this week.

The issue that threatens to divide the alliance is Ukraine’s ambition to join it. One camp, including Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine itself, wants to see the country put on a fast track to Nato membership. Another, led by the US and supported by Germany, wants to slow the process down and to promote other forms of security guarantee for Ukraine.

Skilful diplomats will probably find a form of words that will paper over these cracks. The final Nato communiqué is likely to assert that Ukraine will join the alliance in the future but avoid any pledge to fast-track the process.

That, however, will not be the end of the matter. Lying behind this argument are fundamental differences about how to end the Ukraine war and how to guarantee the peace once it does end.

The hardline camp believes that the goal should be complete victory for Ukraine and humiliating defeat for Russia. They think that the only way to secure peace is to break Russian power and then to bring Ukraine into Nato. They believe that Kyiv has already paid a heavy price for excessive US and German caution in the delivery of weapons — and that the Americans are now repeating this mistake by dragging their feet over future Ukrainian membership of the alliance.

The American and German governments are more cautious about both war aims and securing the peace. One senior German diplomat muses that behind Poland’s talk of the need for a total defeat of Vladimir Putin is the hope that Russia might eventually break apart. That, he says, is an idea that Berlin has no interest in.

The Americans are not saying that Ukraine can never join Nato. But they are gently applying the brakes by insisting that every technical requirement must be fulfilled first. When the indignant hardliners cite the recent fast-tracking of Finland into the alliance as a precedent, the US response is that Finland, as an EU member, already fulfilled all the requirements on anti-corruption measures, democratic governance and the like.

Behind the formal American objections lies a concern that any commitment to fast-track Ukraine into Nato could prolong the war, and introduce dangerous complications into a future peace settlement. For example, would Crimea be covered by a Nato security guarantee for Ukraine? Some US officials also worry that some allies would actually like to see Nato drawn directly into the war with Russia. “If they want that, they should say so openly,” says one well-placed Washingtonian, “because that’s not our policy.”

Rather than push for Nato now, the US is emphasising alternative forms of security guarantee. The idea would be to establish a unique military partnership with Ukraine involving the transfer of high-tech weaponry and intense military-to-military co-operation. The plan, says one US official, is to create a “defence-oriented force that would present too hard a target for any future Russian aggression”. Biden and others have likened this to the US relationship with Israel. Like the Israelis, the Ukrainians would be a close American ally, furnished with the most advanced military equipment — including, controversially, cluster munitions. But crucially, like Israel, Ukraine would not, initially, be covered by Nato’s Article V security guarantee.

All this talk of alternative security guarantees worries some of Ukraine’s most ardent supporters in Nato. Last week, Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister, put her frustration on the record when she told the FT: “We need practical, concrete steps on the path to Nato membership. I have the feeling that talking about security guarantees actually blurs the picture . . . the only security guarantee that really works . . . is Nato membership.”

It is easy to sympathise with Kallas’s view that ambiguity is dangerous and that “grey zones are sources of conflict and war”. Ukraine would certainly be safer inside Nato and experience suggests that Russia would be unlikely to attack a country covered by Article V.

The Biden White House is likely to be the most Ukraine- and Nato-friendly administration that the US can currently produce. The Republicans are the party of Donald Trump, not of the late John McCain. Any move to fast-track Ukraine into Nato could easily become an issue in the US presidential election. Senate ratification of Ukrainian membership would not be guaranteed.

The Guardian has this absolutely garbage statement from Colin Kahl, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy:

Colin Kahl, the US undersecretary for defence, visiting London alongside the president, said there was resistance in the White House to any suggestion “that there’s a degree of automaticity or immediacy” to Nato membership.

Kahl is supposed to be stepping down some time this month. It can’t happen soon enough!

The simple fact of the matter is if the Republicans retake the presidency in 2024 those unilateral security guarantees are not going to be worth the paper they’re written on! The Ukrainians aren’t stupid, they know about Tom Cotton’s letter to the Iranians regarding the JCPOA. They know about the House GOP’s Ukraine skepticism and Putinphilia. They know that a Republican Congressional Delegation made up of all GOP senators and one GOP representative spent the 4th of July in Moscow less than a decade ago. They know that Senator Paul hand delivered something to Putin from Trump. They know if they’re not fast tracked into NATO before the 2024 election’s get underway, they’re not getting into NATO any time soon if at all. You know who else knows? Vladimir Putin! And he got everything he could’ve wanted out of today’s NATO communique.

I can understand it that NATO can't admit Ukraine while there's an ongoing war.

But excuse me, saying that Ukraine's military still needs reforms to join NATO — after it has made Russia lose over 2,100 tanks, over 900 APCs, nearly 2,500 IFVs, almost 700 artillery pieces, over…

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 11, 2023

I can understand it that NATO can’t admit Ukraine while there’s an ongoing war. But excuse me, saying that Ukraine’s military still needs reforms to join NATO — after it has made Russia lose over 2,100 tanks, over 900 APCs, nearly 2,500 IFVs, almost 700 artillery pieces, over 230 MRLSs, over 80 airplanes, almost 100 helicopters and a large missile cruiser (all per @oryxspioenkop), after it has generally defeated Russia’s initial all-out blitzkrieg, liberated a large part of its territory, successfully acquired a wide range of Western weaponry and equipment, destroyed the myth of Russia’s historical military invincibility, regained the strategic initiative and launched a full-scale counteroffensive — is a very weak excuse. Let’s at least be honest and admit that it’s NATO being not ready now. Which is still understandable. I think after everything we have seen over the last 16 months, the Ukrainian military would be quite capable of completing reforms to reach full compatibility with NATO regulations if the alliance itself was ready.

So, "not great, not terrible."
A multiyear program to support Ukraine's defense effort under NATO benchmarks, a simplified entry procedure "when the time is right," the NATO-Ukraine council.
Nothing we couldn't realistically expect from the summit.
The struggle goes on.

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 11, 2023

Pretty tepid stuff here. “A draft of a summit communique under discussion on Tuesday pledges to “extend an invitation” to Ukraine to join the alliance when “allies agree and conditions are met”, people familiar with the text told the Financial Times.” https://t.co/sqbI1vhGqy

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) July 11, 2023

Could be argued it's Bucharest 0.9.

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) July 11, 2023

Why? Because it builds into the official explicit position that it needs agreement among the Allies. That was always implicitly clear. Consensus. But it sets this up in black and white as a condition to be met. Which is arguably a small step backwards.

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) July 11, 2023

I mean compare this to…"We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations. MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership." Not sure forward movement at all.

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) July 11, 2023

Before I go any further: learn to fucking thread your tweets!

Now back to your regularly scheduled diatribe!

I’m the only one here at Balloon Juice who really knows what the price for this was for the Georgians in 2008, unless we’ve got Georgian readers. I was deployed in Iraq with the 33rd Shavnabanda. They were attached to our brigade combat team as one of our maneuver battalions. They took more KIAs than the BCT or any echelon within the BCT! It was our job to facilitate them getting home. I will never forget standing there, along with the BCT commander, deputy commander, XO, and the rest of the senior staff, all of us trying to keep proper military bearing while the Georgians – from the battalion commander to the youngest junior enlisted – begged us to come help them. “You’re coming, right? We go, we get started, you come! We came to help you, you’re coming?” We weren’t coming. Our national command authority had lied to their leadership. And now, fifteen years later parts of Georgia are still physically occupied and the government is occupied as well because it is controlled by a party that the Kremlin controls.

If anyone wonders why the US hasn’t been able to win a war since WWII this strategic malpractice is an excellent answer!

Overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force shot down 26 out of 28 Shaheds.
Also, during the day on July 10, three "Lancet" attack UAVs, five reconnaissance drones, and one helicopter were downed.
Glory to our air defenders!
🇺🇦✊
📹 @combined2forces pic.twitter.com/OOWIBAzVAg

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 11, 2023

Orikihiv:

The rescue operations in Orikhiv have been completed. On July 9, russian aerial bombs destroyed the city's largest civilian shelter and the humanitarian aid center. Unfortunately, the number of dead has increased to seven. While the rescuers were sorting out the rubble, the… pic.twitter.com/qOW3hYNYC3

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 11, 2023

The rescue operations in Orikhiv have been completed. On July 9, russian aerial bombs destroyed the city’s largest civilian shelter and the humanitarian aid center. Unfortunately, the number of dead has increased to seven. While the rescuers were sorting out the rubble, the russian terrorists launched another airstrike on them.

Berdyansk:

Strikes/explosions are reported in Berdyansk. Just now. https://t.co/wk8GCRkqVT pic.twitter.com/xKOJBN6y3U

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 11, 2023

/1. So far, only rumors, therefore, take it with skepticism:
some sources (like Ukrainian adviser to the mayor of Mariupil) have begun to report that tonight during attacks on Berdyansk, Russian Lieutenant General Oleg Yuriyovich Tsokov was killed.https://t.co/TiEdM72Z0o pic.twitter.com/eQeAN4F2kI

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 11, 2023

/3. Some Russian sources have begun to reported about the death of Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, as noted as a result of the Storm Shadow missile strike.

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 11, 2023

I’m stopping here. I’m just disgusted. I’m embarrassed as an American and as an American national security professional.

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