Zelensky offers Trump Ukrainian-made drones for weapons ‘mega-deal' — Novaya Gazeta Europe
As part of the proposed deal, the United States would buy 'battle-tested' drones from Ukraine, including those capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 1,300 km, and in exchange Ukraine would buy American weapons.
As The New York Post pointed out, Ukrainian drones capable of hitting targets deep inside Russia territory far outstrip US technology in the area, with US drones also lagging far behind developments in both Russia and China.
'The people of America need this technology, and you need to have it in your arsenal,' Zelensky told The New York Post. 'I think this is really a mega deal, a win-win, as they say.'
Zelensky said that Ukraine was willing to share the expertise it had accumulated in drone warfare over three years of war with Russia with Washington, adding that Ukraine was also conducting similar negotiations with Denmark, Norway and Germany.
The deal is a further sign of warming relations between Kyiv and Washington and of increased cooperation when it comes to arms. On Sunday, Trump said that Washington would provide Kyiv with additional Patriot air defence systems, having become increasingly exasperated with Putin amid continued Russian attacks on Ukraine and Moscow's resistance to a US-brokered ceasefire, according to Axios.
Earlier this month, the US temporarily suspended deliveries of weapons and munitions to Ukraine as it reviewed its own stockpiles. Washington has not publicly commented on Zelensky's proposal.
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To understand this, we need to answer three questions: What is Russia's strategic goal? How has war changed? And how can Russia use the new nature of the war to achieve its goal? As I wrote in a previous article, in the new world of the 'right of force', American, Russian and Chinese interests coincide. They would all like to see Europe divided and weak, incapable of making strong joint decisions. They want a Europe that is not an independent centre of power but only a set of markets in which they can trade profitably. This leads to steps that can even be seen as a certain American-Russian rapprochement. Thus, the Russian strategic goal is not to seize a part of European territory as was expected during the Cold War. It would be enough now to sow panic and chaos; create a humanitarian crisis; generate refugee flows; and collapse and overthrow governments. This could create a domino effect that could bring radical Eurosceptics to power, destroy European unity and (last but not least) cut support to Ukraine. To understand how this could happen, we need to look at the face of modern war. The new face(s) of war The nature of modern warfare has changed radically over the past three years. While the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 looked like the Second World War, radical innovations since then (some of the most important were mentioned here) have changed the battlefield every few months. This has influenced not only tactics but also strategies. And generals (in a phrase attributed to Churchill) are always preparing for the last war. One of the typical delusions is that the war in Ukraine is a 'poor country's war' that is forced to use a large army, while NATO can wage a 'rich country's war' with a small professional army and high-precision weapons. 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These involve activities that are not obviously (at least initially) hostile until they achieve their goals, or those that, in the opinion of the other side, do not cross the threshold of reaction. Examples include the appearance of militants in eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014 who initially seemed unserious. Following this, recently we have seen the repeated infringement of the Polish border by missiles and drones (seemingly by accident); the inexplicable death of American soldiers in Lithuania; the recent fires involving military equipment in Germany and Belgium; a fire affecting telecommunications networks in Poland; and the dangerous use of electronic warfare in the Baltics. Finally, the fourth important feature of war is that it is taking place for the first time in the postmodern world, which affects all other dimensions. 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Russian strike Most likely, we should not expect a Russian strike as a ground operation, featuring powerful tanks and motorized columns aimed at Baltic countries or the Polish-Lithuanian Suwałki corridor. Instead of this, just imagine an attack on Poland that combines: massive missile and drone attacks on energy, infrastructure and logistics facilities (by the way, drones can be marked as Ukrainian); cyber-attacks on government and infrastructure facilities; a navigation collapse due to the large-scale use of electronic warfare; sabotage and terrorist groups creating sudden 'ecological' and man-made disasters; the destabilization of society (already heated) through social networks; the use of a 'fifth column' and 'useful idiots'; crowds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees released across the Belarusian border. I am not saying that everything will necessarily be like this. I just want to emphasize that the war could be completely different from the one Europe is preparing for. 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I already heard this in early February 2022. Valerii Pekar is a chairman of the board of the Decolonization NGO, the author of four books, an adjunct professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University, and a former member of the National Reform Council. New Eastern Europe is a reader supported publication. Please support us and help us reach our goal of $10,000! We are nearly there. Donate by clicking on the button below. geopolitics, Russian invasion of Ukraine
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