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Russia had a clear mission at 4:30 a.m. in Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Russia’s missile forces, long-range aviation and tactical aircraft had a clear mission at 4:30 a.m. in Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Arrayed around Ukraine stood an opposing air force fielding a few dozen operable fighters, a handful of Turkish-supplied TB-2 Bayraktars and an air defense system composed—according to a March 2021 analysis by Polish military academics—of 135 missile interceptor sites, along with several major command and control facilities. |
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| More U.S. F-35As Deploy To Estonia, Lithuania | | Six U.S. Air Force F-35As from RAF Lakenheath, England, forward deployed to Estonia and Lithuania Feb. 27 to further bolster the NATO air presence in Eastern Europe amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. |
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| From The Archive: Should Ukraine Have Given Up Its Nuclear Weapons? | | | Did Ukraine make a mistake when it gave up its nuclear arsenal? That question was first asked after Russia occupied and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, Ukraine had on its territory 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 45 strategic bombers, constituting the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. Three years later, Kyiv agreed to give it up in exchange for guarantees for its sovereignty and territorial integrity by Russia, the U.S. and the UK. Was it the right call? It was, said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in an Aviation Week Viewpoint written shortly after Russia’s seizure of Crimea. Pifer argued that the newly independent nation lacked the infrastructure and money to maintain a nuclear arsenal on its own. Ukraine also would have been an outcast, deprived of billions of dollars in economic aid from the EU and U.S. and access to lending from the International Monetary Fund. “Broke and friendless, a Ukraine facing a crisis with Russia would have done so alone,” Pifer wrote. Today, as Russian forces carve up the country and President Vladimir Putin declares it had never been a real nation, the question of whether Ukraine should have given up its nuclear weapons is back in the forefront.
First published on May 5, 2014, subscribers can click here to read the full column. | | |
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| Russia Does Not Have Air Superiority In Ukraine, U.S. Says | | The Russian military does not have air superiority in Ukraine, with the U.S. Defense Department assessing that Ukrainian command and control has remained intact and the country is still operating air defenses and aircraft, a senior Pentagon official said Feb. 27. |
| Roscosmos Suspends Soyuz Launches From French Guiana | | Roscosmos will suspend launches of Soyuz rockets from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana in response to European Union sanctions on Russia, the CEO of the Russian space corporation Dmitry Rogozin said Feb. 26 on social media. |
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