US President Joe Biden’s decision on 19 May to help facilitate Ukraine’s efforts to procure advanced fourth-generation fighter aircraft was a significant shift in America’s posture. Announced at the G7 summit in Tokyo, the US reversal demonstrated that Biden had overcome his reticence to make such a move, which he had said could send escalatory signals to the Kremlin.

Kyiv has sought this outcome for a while, but until recently it had been met with Western vacillation. This time, like in the earlier impasse about heavy armour—broken when the UK announced it would send Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine—the British government was again the first mover, promising to begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly a variety of Western military aircraft.

But why does Kyiv want Western warplanes so badly? Can it realistically put them to use in the foreseeable future? And which of its friends and partners might be able help?

To begin with, the Ukrainian air force has been seriously degraded by the Russian invasion. Frankly, it’s surprising that it continues to exist at all. One of the more egregious of Russia’s many strategic blunders, stemming from complacent expectations of a swift victory in 2022, was its failure to destroy Ukrainian airpower in the early days of the war. In the face of a robust Ukrainian air-defence network, heavily augmented by NATO military assistance, Russia is still unable to claim air supremacy.

That said, the Ukrainian air force is heavily constrained in its ability to operate effectively. Russia’s military can detect Ukrainian aircraft almost at will. Its own planes can fire standoff air-to-air missiles at Ukrainian aircraft at a greater range than Ukrainian warplanes possess. Ukraine’s main combat aircraft are Russian: the Su-27, which isn’t operated by any Western military, the multirole Mig-29 and the Su-25. And while Poland and Slovakia have recently donated replacement Mig-29s, access to spare parts remains a logistical headache.

The addition of Western combat aircraft will go a long way towards levelling the playing field in the air war. It will enable Ukraine’s air force to target Russian warplanes that currently operate with virtual impunity, often loitering just over the Russian border.

The ability to provide better air support for ground forces is another important reason Kyiv is so keen to acquire advanced Western airframes. While delivery lead times mean Ukraine is unlikely to acquire the planes in sufficient numbers in advance of its looming counteroffensive, they will be critical to defending any territory it recaptures. They will also help Ukraine protect its population and critical infrastructure against missiles and drones, which will doubtless form part of Russia’s response to any Ukrainian successes on the ground.

Critics have claimed that training the Ukrainian military to fly Western aircraft—something its pilots have no experience with—will take too long, and require more planes than Ukraine has pilots available. But those concerns are overblown. An experienced pilot can learn how to fly a Western aircraft like an F-16 Viper in a few weeks, and they can become fully trained in around six months. Ukraine has nearly 50 pilots it can spare, as well as engineering and support crews. And, according to the Ukrainian air force’s Yuri Ignat, around 24 warplanes would be sufficient to turn the tide.

That means Ukraine could be operating at least two squadrons of Western fighters before 2024—and at a time when weather conditions will make any Russian attempts to contest Ukrainian territorial gains more difficult.

The Ukrainian government has focused particularly on obtaining the venerable General Dynamics F-16. There are two reasons for that: a number of NATO countries operate them, and there are some 3,000 F-16s in service globally. The trouble is that many US allies are reluctant to release them to Ukraine, either because doing so would degrade their own ongoing operational needs, or because their F-16s are needed to backfill combat capabilities during the transition to more modern aircraft.

The Belgian government has announced that it can train pilots but can’t supply F-16s. Norway has already retired its F-16s, transferring 32 of them to Romania. Poland has said that donating some of its planes would weaken its combat power. Other NATO members like Greece and Turkey that operate the aircraft are clearly not minded to entertain giving them to Ukraine.

The most likely solution seems to be a coalition involving the Netherlands and Denmark. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during a meeting with the UK’s Rishi Sunak that the topic was not taboo, and Denmark’s acting defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, claimed that he was ‘open to the idea’. It’s also conceivable—though unlikely—that spare planes might come from America’s aircraft boneyard adjoining Davis–Monthan airbase in Arizona. That would present Ukraine with the logistical problem of having to operate a cornucopia of different types of F-16s, which would also be delayed by the need to check and upgrade aircraft mothballed many years ago.

Perhaps Australia could help here. With its acquisition of the F-35A Lightning II well advanced, the air force still has around 40 F-18 ‘Classic’ Hornets in storage that it has so far failed to sell. The F-18 is not dissimilar to the F-16 in terms of its overall capabilities and would take roughly the same amount of time to train on. And while one report claims that Australia’s Hornets are outdated and degraded, others say they are in good condition and come with spare parts.

Moreover, despite strong initial contributions by both the current Australian government and its predecessor, concerns have recently been raised that Australia’s commitment to assist Kyiv shows signs of tapering off.

Under those circumstances, sending F-18s to Ukraine—or at least seriously investigating the prospect of doing so—would significantly bolster Australian support at a crucial time in Ukraine’s struggle to roll back Russia’s unprovoked, illegal and barbaric invasion.

China, India and Japan are leading a surge in military spending in the Asian region with geopolitical tensions pushing South Korea, Australia and Taiwan, among others, to follow suit.

China’s military spending now exceeds the combined outlays of the next 25 biggest nations in the region, for which there are reliable estimates, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) annual survey. It does not make estimates for Vietnam or North Korea.

The survey shows China lifted military spending by 4.2% (after allowing for inflation) last year to the equivalent of US$298 billion. With a fast-growing economy, China has been able to lift spending each year for almost three decades while the military outlays recorded by SIPRI have been trending lower as a share of GDP, currently standing at 1.6%.

China’s spending growth has outstripped that of other nations in the region, rising by 75% over the last 10 years. The average across the rest of the region has been 33%. Ten years ago, China’s military spending was the same as the combined outlays of the next five biggest nations: India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. In 2022, China’s spending exceeded that of the next five nations by US$70 billion.

SIPRI records that Australia’s spending has been trending lower, dropping from 2.1% of GDP in 2016 to 1.9% last year. The 2020 defence strategic update noted that the defence budget had been ‘decoupled’ from measures of GDP so that it did not have to be adjusted for every shift in the economy, however it remains a useful benchmark for comparison. Defence minister Richard Marles has confirmed plans to lift spending to 2.2% of GDP and raised the possibility it may have to rise further.

The new defence strategic review did not quantify the cost of its recommendations but noted that managing the defence budget would be difficult given severe pressures on maintaining the defence workforce and funding both existing capabilities and those it has recommended. It noted that ‘defence spending must be a reflection of the strategic circumstances our nation faces’.

The SIPRI database shows that India lifted its military spending last year by 6% (after allowing for inflation) while Japan increased its spending by 5.9%. India is managing tensions with both China and Pakistan and spends the equivalent of 2.43% of GDP on its military. India’s spending is seven times greater than Pakistan’s although it also devotes 2.63% of GDP to its military.

Japan has broken its post-war commitment to keep military spending below 1% of GDP, with last year’s outlays lifting spending to 1.08%. Its spending of US$53.9 billion is only 64% more than Australia’s US$32.8 billion, although its population is five times greater, and its geopolitical challenges are much more immediate.

SIPRI’s data also underlines the US concerns that Taiwan has not been doing enough to secure its future. Taiwan’s spending has drifted lower as a share of GDP from 2.12% in 2012 to 1.61% last year. After allowing for inflation, Taiwan’s military spending has risen by only 7.8% in the last decade, one of the smallest increases in the region.

Facing a similarly threatening neighbour, South Korea, by contrast, spent the equivalent of 2.72% of GDP on its military last year. Inflation is having an effect on the real value of military budgets around the world. SIPRI noted that a nominal 2.9% increase in South Korea’s military spending last year became a 2.5% fall, after allowing for inflation.

Across the region, India is the second largest military spender, followed by Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan. Australia’s spending is two and a half times greater than Taiwan’s, although the population size is similar.

While most nations in the region are focussed on China’s rising military strength, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine has brought an increase in spending in Europe and in the US.

The US retains by far the largest military with spending of US$812 billion last year—almost three times that of China. Its commitment of 3.45% of GDP is one of the largest in the advanced world, exceeded only by Israel (4.5%) and by both Russia (4.06%) and the Ukraine (33.5%).

The new appreciation of the threat from Russia has led to an increase in military spending in Western Europe (3% after inflation). The SIPRI estimates, which include military aid provided to Ukraine, show particularly large post-inflation increases last year in Finland (35.6%), Sweden (12%), Netherlands (12.4%), Belgium (12.9%) and Denmark (8.8%). Germany’s spending was up 2.3% while French spending was steady, and the United Kingdom was up 3.7%.

At the recent International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, its managing director, Christina Georgieva, warned that the ‘peace dividend’, which the global economy has enjoyed since the end of the cold war in the late 1980s, was disappearing. ‘No more can we take peace for granted. Russia invading Ukraine is not only a tragedy for the Ukrainian people; it is a tragedy for the global community because it sends a message that defence expenditures have to go up. The peace dividend is gone.’

Globally, military spending peaked at around 6.3% of world GDP during the Vietnam war in the 1960s. By 1985, it was still at 4.2% of GDP, however following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, global spending dropped to 2.2% of GDP by the end of the 1990s and has largely remained there.

The funds liberated by lower defence spending were redirected in most nations towards welfare, education, and infrastructure. Australia displayed a similar trend. Military outlays peaked at 3.8% of GDP in 1968 during the Vietnam War but had fallen to 2.5% by 1985. Spending then drifted lower, touching 1.6% of GDP by 2013 as the government sought savings to bring the budget back to balance following the global financial crisis.

That pressure for savings meant that the recommendations of the 2010 defence white paper, including its call to replace the Collins submarine fleet, were not acted on.

The problem for the Albanese government in lifting defence spending is that the budget is still deep in deficit, despite near record prices for Australia’s principal commodity exports. Paying more for defence or anything else can only be achieved by increasing borrowing, which would not be a sustainable source of finance if export prices were to fall. The alternative is higher levels of taxation, however neither side of politics is prepared to engage the public in that debate.

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made headlines over the weekend when his claim the Ukraine war was ‘launched against’ Russia provoked laughter from the audience during a forum in India.

But I was in the room and can report he also received applause and indifference. Understanding why can help explain the differences in views on the war between developing countries and the West.

The incident happened at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier geopolitics forum featuring more than 26 foreign ministers and six current and former heads of state. Many represented the developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific that have variously been called the ‘global south’ or ‘majority world’.

The organisers’ decision to invite Lavrov to speak was controversial. To be fair, it was counterbalanced by speakers such as former US defence secretary Jim Mattis and Australian Defence Force chief Angus Campbell, who eloquently presented the case that Russia is involved in an illegal war.

While pro-Ukraine parts of the audience openly laughed at the claim Russia was the victim in the war, there were also those who showed support for Russia’s side.

On Twitter, Indians voiced opinions ranged from neutral to suspicious of the West and resisting taking sides, given India’s longstanding links with Russia.

The rest of the audience seemed simply disengaged.

One of the European experts I spoke to posed the question starkly: why doesn’t the global south care more about the war?

Past links with Russia are clearly important in how countries have responded to the Ukraine war. This is most evident for India, but also for others such as Vietnam and Laos. They may have bonds of affection with Russia or more tangible links, such as a reliance on Russian arms.

These three countries were among 32 that abstained from voting on a resolution at the UN General Assembly last week—alongside China, South Africa and others—calling for an end to the war and demanding Russia leave Ukraine’s territory.

And some countries in the global south are repulsed by what they see as Western hypocrisy and double standards. Lavrov received audience applause, for example, when he criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq and other Western transgressions.

He also tried hard to paint the flow-on effects of the war—such as the impact of the Ukraine war on grain supplies to developing countries—as the fault of the West.

These factors tend to push countries towards a pro-Russian or neutral stance.

But it is vital to the international system that countries are prohibited from using force against other countries. Even if all the things Lavrov said about Ukraine were factually true, it would still fall short of justifying an invasion.

The fact that Western countries have broken international law—such as the invasion of Iraq—doesn’t mean we should give up on it.

For countries that are disengaged from the Ukraine war, there are other factors at play.

They may see Ukraine’s plight as something unique to countries with a great power as a neighbour. The reaction of such countries to Ukraine might be: ‘It’s terrible to be you. But I don’t have the same concerns.’

There’s some evidence that countries adopting stronger positions against Russia tend to have a more acute sense of vulnerability.

Some developing countries may also believe that while the invasion of Ukraine is a bad thing, it’s not something they can do much about. There might be a sense of fatalism that this is simply ‘how the world is’ and the global south has limited ability to change it.

This plays into the most important factor in why so much of the global south is disengaged by the war—it has other problems and challenges to deal with. These include equitable access to healthcare, climate adaptation, insufficient digital infrastructure, terrorism, lack of development finance, food and fuel insecurity, the debt crisis and the overriding imperative of sustainable growth.

This can explain why a country like Brazil has condemned the invasion but not offered significant support to Ukraine.

This point was made strongly by India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, in a video clip at the start of the Raisina Dialogue: ‘Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.’

This seemed to prompt self-reflection with some in attendance. Slovakia’s foreign minister and others repeated the same point.

I left the forum thinking that perhaps there’s more of a role for India in building understanding than I’d initially thought.

Meenakashi Lekhi, the minister of state for external affairs, suggested India can act as a bridge as a country of the north (geographically), south (economically), east (culturally) and west (democratically).

She talked with passion from the perspective of the global south—the part of the world that has been subject to imperialism and exploitation—making her argument more persuasively than any global north politician could.

In her view, ‘Whenever a conflict breaks out in any part of the globe, it is going to impact an individual at a faraway distance.’

This is exactly what we’ve seen with the invasion of Ukraine causing a spike in the cost of food, fertiliser and energy, which has been devastating for developing countries.

Precisely because India cares about being a ‘voice for the voiceless’, it’s more likely to be listened to in the global south.

This drives home an important point that Western leaders should keep top of mind: if the West wants developing countries to care about its concerns, it needs to care about the issues that matter to the developing world. Development and defence are linked.

Russia’s war on Ukraine, with its images of helicopters trailing flames, has demonstrated their vulnerability to effective air defences and triggered debate on the future of crewed aircraft sent to penetrate enemy airspace.

Former Australian Army major general Mick Ryan, who has studied the conflict closely since Moscow’s 2014 invasion, says Russia is no longer flying crewed aircraft over Ukraine because of its potent air- and missile-defence regime.

‘I think attack helicopters are very vulnerable and have an uncertain future,’ Ryan says.

‘Crewed fighter aircraft are unlikely to penetrate enemy airspace and complex air-defence regimes in the future. That’s an important conversation to have.’

The Russians have a sophisticated air force, he says, but unlike the Americans, they’ve never undertaken a large-scale air campaign. ‘We’ve seen the Americans from World War II onwards conduct these major campaigns, and they learn. After Vietnam, you saw a much greater focus on suppression of air defences.’

The Russians have not got this right, says Ryan. They tried it in the first days of the war, striking air-defence radars and missile sites.

The Ukrainians were able, with a much smaller and less sophisticated air force and air-defence framework, to outfox the Russians and bought their country time. ‘If the Russians had been able to suppress Ukraine’s air-defence system, they’d have better supported their ground forces, and we could be in a very different war now.’

Ryan says it’s likely that only the US Air Force could mount an integrated air suppression regime on the scale required in Ukraine.

While the Royal Australian Air Force has very sophisticated capabilities like its Growler electronic attack aircraft and stealthy F-35 joint strike fighters, they’d be operating in an environment where adversaries have seen how to integrate military and non-military sensors into a secure network.

‘The Ukrainians have, for instance, enabled civilians to report missiles or aircraft much more rapidly than we’ve seen before,’ Ryan adds.

‘Regardless of how sophisticated crewed aircraft are, they’re going to find it much more difficult to penetrate enemy airspace, and if they can, it will be a much more lethal environment for them.’

Ryan finds it hard to believe systems such as attack helicopters will be survivable in the future.

‘The Ukrainians and the Russians now use them to lob rockets from long range. That’s the only way they can survive. We’ve seen massive losses of Russian and Ukrainian attack helicopters, even the most sophisticated Ka-52 Russian helicopters. They’re slow and easy to detect.’

So, what replaces the crewed attack helicopter?

‘A system of things,’ says Ryan. ‘Different forms of ground reconnaissance, crewed and uncrewed ground combat systems with uncrewed aerial systems, loitering munitions and ground-based loitering munitions. Uncrewed ground vehicles can carry munitions. This is a question of imagination, rather than technology.’

Uncrewed aircraft are likely to have a role if they are smaller with lower profiles and are harder to detect. But it’s also about loitering munitions that are very small and expendable and can be procured in large numbers quickly.

‘Companies in Australia make those things, but we’re just not buying them. The Ukrainians certainly are, so you can operate over an enemy ground force that doesn’t involve crewed aircraft or even large uncrewed aircraft.’

It has been demonstrated often that ground and naval forces need air support and air cover to survive. Has that changed?

‘I don’t think that’s changed at all,’ Ryan says. ‘We need to be able to operate across all domains at the same time. If an enemy has an air force, you want your own air force and an air-defence regime to allow you freedom of movement and to deny the enemy freedom of movement. It’s how you affect control of the air in a modern environment.’

Most of the fighting and dying in Ukraine involves soldiers on the ground and civilians. But Ryan says air campaigns are critical, whether they involve helicopters providing resupply and casualty evacuation, attack helicopters or crewed aircraft from Ukraine operating defensive missions or Russian crewed aircraft flying over Belarus and Russia to launch long-range missiles.

He says the role of autonomous systems should not be overemphasised because over the past two decades investment has gone into autonomy and not counter-autonomy. ‘Smart countries will acquire counter-autonomy systems cheaper than the autonomous systems being used against them.’

The world’s air forces need the capabilities to support naval and ground forces with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and with transport, and the RAAF may well be part of a strategic strike capability, Ryan says. ‘But as other countries have done, you may allocate that to an independent long-range missile command instead of giving it to an air force.’

Ryan says the opportunity to act on lessons from Ukraine will be in implementing the recommendations of the defence strategic review by former defence minister Stephen Smith and former Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, now with the government.

‘I hope they do so quickly,’ Ryan says. ‘There’s little point in running a review and then having the Department of Defence spend a year or two mulling it over before they take any action.’

Ryan says the review will be the first indication of what Australia might have learned from Ukraine.

‘I hope it has incorporated those lessons—profound ones for strategy, for air forces, for naval forces and for ground forces, as well as the logistics and national indigenous defence industry that we should heed. We should be looking at how we develop strategies, and if they’re based on good assumptions. We’ve seen the Russians perform very poorly at the strategic level with bad assumptions about Ukraine.’

Ukraine, a technologically sophisticated nation, is performing magnificently, he says. As part of the USSR, Ukraine built Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, and Ukrainian missiles sank it.

Also important, Ryan says, will be the capacity to take risks.

‘Some things in the review may seem like good ideas but won’t work out. We need to learn even from failures. And we must ensure we have an ADF postured to learn and adapt once a conflict begins.’

Ryan says the ADF can’t put all of its eggs into one basket, as with long-range strike.

‘Combat is now conducted at longer range but, once you’ve run out of missiles, is the enemy deterred? History shows that’s unlikely. We must be able to engage in combat on the ground, in the air, on the surface of the ocean and under the ocean, in space and with cyber. We need balance.’

The Ukrainians manufacture munitions and equipment that allowed them to survive until Western support kicked in.

‘Australia does not have that capability. We don’t produce weapons or munitions in the quantities we’d need in any significant conflict.’

Ryan says those implementing the defence review must consider survivability of land forces and air forces and the need to integrate air and ground operations in a way the Russians have found difficult.

‘There’s a lot in the non-kinetic realm, like cyber operations, strategic influence operations, and the need for good leaders at every level knowledgeable about their profession and their people.

‘These are not new lessons, but whether we learn them or not is another question.’ Ryan identified early in this war a Ukrainian strategy he calls ‘corrosion’. ‘They’ve targeted the key elements of Russian fighting power, the physical means with which they fight, the intellectual means such as their tactics and techniques, and their morale and unit cohesion. They’ve corroded the Russian military from within, collapsed its capability, morale and cohesion.

‘When the Ukrainians are not attacking the Russians directly, they corrode them with long-range strikes to deny them their logistics, break down unit cohesion and destroy morale. Then they attack.’

ASPI senior analyst Marcus Hellyer agrees with Ryan on these issues.

‘We need to be cautious about extrapolating directly from Ukraine to our own situation since our geographies are very different, but there are valuable lessons to be learned,’ he says.

The extremely vulnerability of helicopters on the modern battlefield was demonstrated in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the threats have proliferated greatly since then. Hellyer advocated long ago for replacing the Australian Army’s Tiger helicopter with a combination of systems such as uncrewed aerial vessels and long-range rockets rather than another crewed helicopter. He’s not convinced that the planned Apache replacement is the way to go.

‘We can imagine situations where an aircraft like the Apache is useful, but is it a value-for-money solution? At a certain point, the cost outweighs the benefits compared to other solutions.’

Another lesson, Hellyer says, is that very deep magazines will be needed for munitions, from bullets to long-range missiles. ‘We need to back Australian industry to provide this. Setting up local production lines for US missiles here is part of the solution, but Australian companies can also design and build their own.’

Is the day of the crewed combat aircraft over? It’s likely to be a similar situation to armoured vehicles, Hellyer says.

‘If you use armoured vehicles and fighters as the Russians have in Ukraine, you will suffer losses at a rate that Australia will not be able to endure or replace. But as part of an integrated system of systems that leverages the advantages of each component to mitigate their vulnerabilities, then they will likely remain survivable and effective. That means integrating cheaper, disposable uncrewed systems with crewed systems to provide greater mass, firepower and resilience.’

In some ways Australia is ahead of the game, Hellyer says. The RAAF has a fifth-generation mindset, integrating advanced systems across the air and space domains. ‘It will not send fighters on a doomed, Charge of the Light Brigade mission without the support of sophisticated enablers.

‘In other ways, we are well behind. We will run out of munitions in days, if not hours, and our main combat systems have limited range—and are significantly out-ranged by adversary systems.’

Robust, contestable analysis is needed to determine whether the solution is longer range crewed aircraft like the B-21 bomber, longer range strike drones or large numbers of strike missiles.

Ultimately, this is as much a matter of cost as of capability. It doesn’t matter how good your $50 million aircraft is if runs out of $1 million missiles in a few missions or is destroyed by swarms of $100,000 missiles.

At present, by pursuing small numbers of exquisitely expensive crewed platforms, we are losing the cost calculus, Hellyer says.

A Russian victory in Ukraine would have a grievous impact far beyond its borders, threatening wider global instability, disrupting food and energy security, weakening international institutions and even reducing the world’s ability to deal with climate change.

‘If Putin is allowed to win, the face and deterrence value of collective security on the international rules-based systems will be fatally wounded,’ Kyiv’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, tells The Strategist. A Russian victory will trigger a new arms race as nations divert resources from a focus on stability and issues such as the changing climate to arm and protect themselves.

Developing countries, in particular, won’t care much about climate change if they can’t feed their own people and if gas and petrol prices have skyrocketed, Myroshnychenko says.

‘It’s in everybody’s interests to help Ukraine win so we can get back to advancement and economic development, and climate change.’ That’s why it must be a priority for nations such as Australia to help Ukraine defend itself.

Myroshnychenko says that if Ukraine fails to defend its territory, then the United Nations will lose its credibility, the UN charter will lose its gravitas and the Security Council will have lost its legitimacy.

In addition, he says, efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons will be eroded because of Russia’s constant threats to use them. ‘If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, which we voluntarily gave up in 1994, the Russians would not have been able to invade us. Also, if we were part of a big collective defence alliance such as NATO, Russia would not be able to also attack us.’

Now the world is watching to see if Russian President Vladimir Putin can get away with changing international borders using nuclear threats and military force, Myroshnychenko says. Any small nation seeing what’s happening must be saying to itself, ‘So the Ukrainians are fighting, are we ready to fight?’

‘Ukraine must win.’

Kyiv is alert to the possibility of Russian forces again trying to capture the capital and pushing through the territory to the west of the city to cut off Ukraine’s supplies from its allies. ‘We don’t rule it out and we are prepared to defend Kyiv again,’ he says. The Ukrainians have recaptured considerable territory and Putin needs results. They expect the Russians to also concentrate forces in Donetsk, where heavy fighting is taking place.

Myroshnychenko says that with more artillery, air defence systems and longer range rocket launchers coming, there’s an air of optimism among Ukraine’s forces. ‘Tanks are important for us to go on the offensive. This is an existential war for us. We need to learn how to navigate and manage all the different equipment we are getting.’

But as the war drags on, it’s having a huge impact on the lives and wellbeing of the people of Ukraine. ‘Civilians are dying in large numbers. Many are traumatised,’ Myroshnychenko says. ‘They’ve been driven from their homes and lost loved ones. Five million people are refugees and another nine million have been internally displaced. The Russians have destroyed 50% of the power-generation infrastructure and civilians are suffering without electricity or heating. Russia is betting on Ukrainians being exhausted and putting pressure on [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky to solve this war at any cost. They are deliberately destroying that infrastructure and making life difficult to exhaust Ukraine. It’s a classic war of attrition.’

Ukraine’s resilience and its ability to fight depend to a significant extent on the flow of supplies from its partners. That includes financial help as Ukraine’s GDP has dropped by 30% in the past year, leaving a US$36 billion budget hole to be filled.

Australia is providing 90 Bushmaster armoured troop carriers along with old but refurbished M113 armoured vehicles, howitzers, ammunition, de-mining equipment and anti-armour weapons.

Seventy Australian solders are in the UK helping train Ukrainian recruits.

The Bushmasters have been very effective at getting soldiers to the battlefields and taking the wounded to safety, Myroshnychenko says.

Today, the Australian government has announced that unarmed drones will be sent to add to the surveillance capabilities of Ukraine’s forces. And those in the Russian government considered to be prolonging the war will be singled out for personal sanctions.

The Ukrainians have masterfully used every weapon they can get their hands on to hold back the Russian forces. Out of necessity, they have deployed the Bushmasters in offensive roles normally filled by heavier infantry fighting vehicles, and which the lighter troop carriers are not designed for, and some have been destroyed.

‘This is war,’ says Myroshnychenko.