General and Former Defense Official Urge Nonlethal Military Aid for Ukraine.

— Ukraine’s military has an urgent need for nonlethal military assistance like body armor, night-vision goggles, communications gear and aviation fuel to defend against a potential Russian attack, according to a new analysis by a former NATO commander and a former Pentagon official.

But wary of provoking Russia, the Obama administration has been reluctant to provide it, they say.

“Implementation of U.S. nonlethal military aid is seriously flawed and needs immediate correction,” Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Phillip A. Karber wrote in a copy of the report that The New York Times obtained on Tuesday. General Clark, who is retired, is the former NATO commander who led the alliance’s forces during the 1998 Kosovo conflict, and Mr. Karber is a former strategy adviser to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

NATO has also moved cautiously. Ukraine’s foreign minister recently said a NATO team would assess his nation’s military needs, but some Western officials say the alliance is unlikely to provide much assistance until a new president is elected on May 25 and the East-West crisis over Ukraine eases.

But General Clark and Mr. Karber say that Ukraine’s forces have a pressing need for more nonlethal aid, and that providing it could help deter Russia, which has positioned about 40,000 troops near Ukraine’s border, from intervening militarily in eastern Ukraine.

“The most important assistance currently needed to make the existing Ukrainian force as defensible as possible in the current crisis (between now and the elections of 25 May) is nonlethal equipment from the U.S.,” they wrote after a recent visit to Ukraine. . .

“Russian occupation of Crimea has virtually destroyed Ukraine’s coastal defense from the south,” they wrote, adding that threats from other directions “divert Ukrainian political attention and disperse badly needed forces to the southwest and northwest.”
Ukraine, they say, needs more aircraft, and more antiaircraft and antitank missiles. But it also has a dire need for nonlethal assistance.

Without body armor, Ukrainian troops are vulnerable to snipers. Only one in 100 soldiers, they write, is equipped with body armor. Without night-vision gear, Ukrainian forces cannot detect Russian infiltrators.
Ukrainian troops also need satellite radios to coordinate forces along a broad front “with no reserve and no air support to fill in the gaps,” they say. Another reason the radios are needed, they say, is that the Russian military would most likely cut and jam communications during an invasion as it did in Crimea.

Ukraine has such a shortage of aviation fuel that commanders are holding much of it in reserve in case Russia invades. But that means that Ukrainian helicopters do not have enough fuel for training or to effectively patrol the border.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/world/general-and-former-defense-official-urge-nonlethal-military-aid-for-ukraine.html?ref=world&_r=0