A steady supply of Western military equipment could enable Ukraine to surpass Russian military stockpiles as the war unfolds, thus neutralizing a key advantage for the Kremlin and establishing a substantial military buffer between NATO and Russia.

“We can see that we receive weapons even from those countries who are not that much sure about [Ukraine’s] current application [to join NATO], as they’re afraid to provoke the Russian Federation,” Dr. Hanna Shelest, an Odesa-based nonresident senior fellow for the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Washington Examiner. “It seems to me that [with respect to] NATO application, we should speak more from the political point of view, while the weapons delivery more from the defense and deterrence point of view.”