Overnight Defense & National Security — Ukraine hangs in the balance

by Ellen Mitchell - 02/25/22 7:46 PM ET

It’s Friday, welcome to Overnight Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Russia’s deadly incursion into Ukraine rages on into the weekend as Western officials scramble to impose harsh economic penalties on Russia and its leaders, deliver more aid to Ukraine and stand up a NATO force meant to deter further Kremlin aggression into Europe.

We’ll break down what’s happened today in Ukraine and the response from the world.

For The Hill, I’m Ellen Mitchell. Send me tips at emitchell@digital-staging.thehill.com.  

Let’s get to it.

Historical first: NATO activates response force

NATO, for the first time in its history, is activating its NATO Response Force (NRF) in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have activated NATO’s defense plans to prepare ourselves to respond to a range of contingencies and secure Alliance territory, including by drawing on our response forces,” NATO heads of state and government said in a joint statement released Friday after the alliance held a virtual summit.

“We are now making significant additional defensive deployments of forces to the eastern part of the Alliance. We will make all deployments necessary to ensure strong and credible deterrence and defense across the Alliance, now and in the future.”

What is the NRF?: The extraordinary move marks the first time NATO has activated the NRF, a multinational force comprised of around 40,000 land, air, maritime and special operations personnel the alliance can deploy on short notice as needed. All 30 members of NATO must agree to activate the force, which they did on Thursday.

The Pentagon in January put 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened alert for such a mission, and with the NRF now activated, those troops could soon be ordered to Europe to help bolster NATO countries near Ukraine. President Biden has stressed, however, that they will not go to Ukraine as it is not a member of the alliance.

Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Gen. Tod Wolters, the head of the NRF, called the force’s activation a “historic moment” according to a statement.

The force is still on standby and has not yet been deployed.

Additional help: In addition, NATO has “deployed defensive land and air forces in the eastern part of the Alliance, and maritime assets across the NATO area,” according to its statement.

The alliance also reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine, and pledged continued “political and practice support” to its government.

Speaking to reporters after the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the U.S., Canada and European allies have deployed “thousands of more troops to the eastern part of the alliance,” with more than 100 jets and 120 ships operating on high alert in more than 30 locations.

Read more here.

Russia facing ‘more resistance’ than expected

Russian forces moving toward Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv are “meeting more resistance than they expected,” a senior defense official said Friday.

“I can’t give you an exact geographic location of where they are, but they are not moving on Kyiv as fast as what we believe they anticipated they would be able to do,” the official told reporters.

“In general, the Russians have lost a little bit of their momentum,” the official later added.

Advancing further: Russia is continuing to advance into three major areas of Ukraine since beginning an assault on the country early Thursday morning local time. Russian troops are advancing toward Kyiv from Belarus; into the area around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city; and from Crimea in the south toward Kherson, which sits on a major river, the official said.

Russian forces moving toward Kherson have also appeared to split off to head to the northeast “in the direction of Mariupol and the Donbas region,” the official added.

The official also confirmed that there is a Russian “amphibious assault” underway to the west of Mariupol along the Ukrainian coast. The assault is coming from the Sea of Azov, with indications that the Russians “are putting potentially thousands of naval infantry ashore there.”

Read the full story here.

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PENTAGON MULLING WAYS TO GET MORE LETHAL AID TO UKRAINE

The U.S. military will provide additional lethal aid for Ukraine but is working through the logistics of delivery given the contested airspace over Ukraine, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Friday.

“We’re continuing to look for ways to support Ukraine to defend themselves,” press secretary John Kirby told reporters. “And we’re very actively engaged in those efforts to help them better defend themselves through both lethal and non-lethal assistance.”

Drastic changes: Kirby later added that as the situation in Ukraine has drastically changed since Thursday, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered into Ukraine some of the more than 150,000 troops amassed near the border.

“We’re going to have to look for other ways to do this,” the Pentagon spokesman said.

“The airspace over Ukraine is contested, the Russians don’t have superiority of it, it’s contested,” Kirby said. “We are going to provide additional security assistance for Ukraine, we will. How that is going to be done is still being worked out.”

Limited details: He added that he won’t detail what the U.S. would send into Ukraine given the security situation.

“I have not been detailing for any of you each and every package, each and every shipment, because I think you can understand, and it’s particularly relevant now, that Ukraine is involved in a no-kidding invasion of their country,” Kirby said. “We wouldn’t want to put it out there in the public space everything that they’re getting from the United States.”

The U.S. government has provided about $650 million in security assistance to Ukraine in the past year, and the Biden administration is reportedly expected to ask Congress for billions more.

Read the full story here.

WH seeks $6.4B in Ukraine-related aid

The White House is asking Congress to approve $6.4 billion in additional funding to help respond to the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine, two sources confirmed to The Hill.

The request includes $2.9 billion for State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for humanitarian assistance as well as security assistance to Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and allies on NATO’s eastern flank, according to a Biden administration official.

The Biden administration is also asking Congress for $3.5 billion in additional funding for the Pentagon, according to the official.

More details: White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday told reporters officials with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were in touch with Congress about additional assistance as it relates to Ukraine.

An OMB official told The Hill the administration made the request during a recent conversation with lawmakers.

“As the President and bipartisan members of Congress have made clear, the United States is committed to supporting the Ukrainian people as they defend their country and democracy,” the OMB official said.

Read the rest here

US employs unusual strategy to counter Putin

The White House has aggressively worked to rebut false narratives emanating from Russia about the crisis in Ukraine by proactively releasing intelligence information, a highly unusual strategy that experts and former officials say has knocked Russian President Vladimir Putin off his game.

The tactic didn’t prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, but experts credit it with scrambling and defanging some of the Russian plots to create a false justification for an invasion, as well as preparing the world to react quickly.

“It didn’t deter them, but it disrupted what they were doing and I think short circuited some of their plans,” said Clinton Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Removing the element of surprise: President Biden credited this strategy in a speech from the White House on Thursday, making clear on the world stage that “Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war.”

“We have been transparent with the world — we shared declassified intelligence about Russia’s plans and cyber attacks and false pretexts — so that there can be no confusion or cover up,” he said.

Vladimír Bilčík, head of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Interference, told The Hill that the blunt and dire warnings from the U.S. took away Putin’s ability to benefit from the element of surprise.

“This transparency, this quick exposure and this intelligence sharing has been extremely useful because I think it has pointed to a number of weak points in Russia’s strategy. There has been little element of surprise in terms of what’s to come,” he said.