NATO allies urge Congress to pass Ukraine aid bill

BRUSSELS, Belgium — While the Congress fiddles as Ukraine burns, most of our NATO allies understand they have an emergency on their borders, as Ukrainian troops run out of artillery shells while Russia pounds major cities that lack air defenses.

Spending a day at NATO headquarters, I felt a sense of urgency there toward addressing the desperate drama in Ukraine that stands in stark contrast to the tragicomedy playing out on Capitol Hill — where, after six months of dangerous delay, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson is finally going to make a convoluted effort on Saturday to pass legislation that includes $60 billion in aid for Ukraine.

Even as Johnson was fighting to keep MAGA isolationists from ousting him from the speaker’s chair, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met on Wednesday with the prime ministers of Denmark, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands, who are trying to corral artillery shells and Patriot air-defense systems for Kyiv.

They are seeking them wherever they can be found — even if this means weakening their own country’s defenses. “My message is clear,” Stoltenberg said. “Send more to Ukraine.”

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Denmark is contributing all of its artillery shells. A Czech government initiative has raised funds to contract for 500,000 shells, with the first tranche to arrive in June. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who may be tapped as the next NATO secretary general, spoke plainly: “Ukraine needs stronger air defenses. Mere words are not enough. They are needed fast.”

Even as NATO members up their game, however, they know they can’t fill the gap if the United States cuts off Ukraine aid and stops sending weapons. They are banking on Johnson’s success with his complex, Democrat-dependent aid legislation.

What’s still missing in the White House and Congress — and what is badly needed to save Ukraine — is the sense of urgency that European NATO members are displaying now.

While the White House obsesses over Mideast crises, most European leaders are watching worriedly as the Kremlin takes advantage of Ukraine’s shortages. Smelling Western weariness, Moscow is raining unprecedented numbers of Iranian-made drones, cruise missiles, and glide bombs on Ukrainian cities, residential buildings, and thermal power plants that provide electricity for every aspect of daily life.

In 2022, I saw the hideous damage done to Kharkiv and Chernihiv in earlier Russian attacks, with bombs deliberately dropped on central squares, shopping malls, universities, apartments, playgrounds, and schools. Yet those cities had been slowly rebuilding. Now, they are being hit even harder and are open targets without air defenses on the ground.

On all three trips I’ve made to Ukraine in the last two years, officials have stressed their urgent need for more air defenses, specifically U.S.-made Patriot systems. The West has been reluctant to spare them, and frustration has been rising. “Just give us the damn Patriots,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba exploded to Politico in March.

That frustration has only grown after U.S., British, and French pilots and Patriot weapons systems helped Israel repel an Iranian attack involving more than 300 drones and cruise and ballistic missiles. Ukraine, like Israel, is not a NATO member. It doesn’t want the involvement of U.S. pilots, only the air-defense systems it needs to protect itself.

Most of Europe’s leaders get the message now, even if Washington doesn’t.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine woke up Europe to the fact that the post-World War II era of peace had ended (18 NATO members now meet the minimum of 2% of GDP for defense spending). Kyiv’s weapons crisis has jolted most European NATO members into recognizing that the pace of Ukraine aid must jump immediately.

With only three Patriot systems, Ukraine doesn’t have enough to protect any big city except Kyiv. Even scarier, President Volodymyr Zelensky says the Kyiv region’s largest thermal power plant was just destroyed because Ukraine ran out of interceptor missiles to fire.

“Western armies have about 100 batteries of Patriots,” according to the European Union’s top foreign policy and security representative, Josep Borrell. The United States has the largest number.

Ukraine, at a minimum, needs seven to cover major cities. Germany is sending one, and as Borrell said at an April 9 conference here, “it is unimaginable that we could not provide” the rest.

» READ MORE: 4 ways the U.S. should help Ukraine right now | Trudy Rubin

At NATO headquarters Wednesday, the Netherlands’ Rutte made that point clearly. He insisted that members must “look at our own stocks [and] purchase what is available around the world.”

And Stoltenberg, a strong advocate of supporting Ukraine, added a crucial message, stressing that if it were a choice between meeting NATO weapons requirements for each country or sending critical systems to Ukraine, members should stress the latter.

In other words, the criticality of the moment demands that NATO members put the emphasis on finding what Ukraine needs, whether from their own stocks or elsewhere, and then get it to Kyiv quickly. On Friday, NATO will be convening a special NATO-Ukraine Council meeting with Zelensky beamed in on video to figure out how to make these words real.

This is the approach the Pentagon, with the most Patriot systems — not to mention stocks of long-range ATACMS missiles that could take out Russian missile depots and far-off delivery systems — should be taking. Instead, excuses are constantly made as to why stocks can’t be touched even if the weapons — like the ATACMS — are being replaced by newer systems.

Urgency is what Stoltenberg proposed, along with the Dutch, Czech, and Danish leaders. That is what’s needed from Congress and the White House if Ukraine is to be saved.