Zelensky faces doubts over bid to mobilise Nato support

War came knocking in the Ukrainian port of Odesa at the weekend in the shape of a deadly Iranian-made 136 Shahad drone fired from Russian positions on the other side of the Black Sea.

It landed in the working class suburb of Kotovskiy. They call this densely populated area the dormitory for workers of the nearby Odesa port. Most were sleeping when the missile hit in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The missile killed at least 10 people and buried another dozen in the rubble. Four of the dead were children; one perished clutched to the chest of her mother.

This was called the worst of the weekly drone attacks on the city that has seen at least 40 civilians die. 

The mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, a tough former soldier, arrived at the scene with the words, “The people who did this will have to answer to God.”

More than two years of bitter fighting has claimed the lives of at least 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers and many more thousands of Russian soldiers. Casualty figures are hard to verify in the conflict as both sides tend to downplay their own losses and inflate those of the enemy.

Those without weapons suffer too under the hard rain of artillery shells and bombs from planes and drones. It is a daily fight for businesses in Ukraine to operate as the infrastructure is destroyed around them. The war has killed at least 10,000 civilians and wounded 18,000, sources on the ground say. Forget about Angola, Ukraine has become the world’s most heavily mined nation.

This is a grim war of attrition in the east as Russia sacrifices thousands of troops to gain small pieces of territory. Russia’s war machine is in full swing and its army can quickly replace every soldier that falls; and also fire many times the number of shells that Ukraine can as it has the support of arsenals of allies including North Korea. 

Ukraine’s forces are becoming weary and bereft. Stories filter back from the front line of Ukrainian gunners with Russian troops in their sights, but nothing to fire. Or the commander who ordered his gunners to hang fire with a scarce shell until more Russian soldiers advanced into range.

In Kyiv, Premier Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to hold things together and persuade Nato to weigh in behind the defence of his country. The fear is that if Ukraine falls, so will many other countries of the former Soviet Union from the Baltic to the Black Sea. His popularity dipped when he fired his charismatic Gen Valeri Zaluzhnyi, yet he is unrelentingly keeping up his campaign to garner more support from Nato.

Say no

That campaign appears to be running into more uncertainty daily. The idea of weapons gifted by from Nato — tantamount to paying people to fight a war for you — appears to be running out of steam.

This week, when French Premier Emmanuel Macron hinted at sending ground troops, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was among the first of a string of leaders to say no, even before President Vladimir Putin threatened nuclear war in a speech to parliament. It is not surprising as hard-up post-Brexit Britain would struggle to put boots on the ground anyway. 

The British Army may keep a strong Navy and effective Airforce, but it has a mere 75,000 regular soldiers — the fewest since it beat Napoleon at Waterloo. The old soldiers and cynics say the army would struggle to deploy to the Isle of Wight — let alone the Crimea.

The money to pay for any action is likely to be an issue in this year’s election in the UK. The UK may pay its bills in Nato, but it is struggling to raise enough for its own defence. It spends more than £40bn annualy, but has an equipment shortfall estimated at nearly £20bn.

In the US the membership of Nato itself could be called into question if Donald Trump is re-elected. As if the world didn’t have enough problems … The power bloc security issues surely contain lessons for the AU.

Reuters