Czech Republic warns latest US arms shipment too small to meet Ukrainian needs

President Joe Biden authorized an $800 million package of weaponry earlier this week “tailored to meet urgent Ukrainian needs for today’s fight,” as a Defense Department announcement put it. The incoming array — including hundreds of armored vehicles, hundreds of Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, 11 Mi-17 helicopters, and howitzers accompanied by 40,000 rounds of artillery ammunition — should help Ukrainian forces contend with invading Russian forces in the open terrain of eastern Ukraine.

“The silence before the storm is coming to an end,” Kopecny told the Washington Examiner. “So, we need to act now, because the big battles are coming. And every town and every village that the Russians seize will be just more Buchas, more massacres, more atrocities.”

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That assessment reflects the impatient unease with which many officials from countries ruled by Moscow during the Cold War view the trans-Atlantic debates about how to support Ukrainian forces. The first weeks of the war centered on a major Russian effort to seize key cities, especially Kyiv, an attack that Ukrainian defenders repelled in part with the assistance of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles provided by Western allies. Those weapons will prove less useful in the next phase of war as Russian troops try to destroy the bulk of the Ukrainian military.

“We have no option to lose, at all. The matter is actually the number of casualties of Ukrainian soldiers, and it would be a huge number,” a senior Ukrainian official told the Washington Examiner. “So right now, the support we have from the West is very important because it can reduce that price significantly, and it can make this conflict shorter.”

Kopecny has overseen one the most aggressive efforts to arm Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, a Czech initiative that capitalized on their stockpiles of Russian-style weaponry. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government sent a diplomatic note to Prague protesting the transfer of Soviet legacy equipment for use against Russian forces, but Kopecny’s boss, Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernocova, gave “the war criminal Putin” a contemptuous response — although Czech officials are conscious of the risks involved in the operation.

“In early March, the Russian ambassador announced to a Czech deputy foreign minister that Russia was expecting terrorist attacks against convoys carrying Western weapons in Ukraine,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told reporters Saturday. “We interpret this as a clear threat that Russia itself was and is preparing sabotage. The Russian side has further announced that it will be unable to prevent this sabotage, which we understand as another in a series of threats sent by Russia.”

Poland reportedly has joined the Czech Republic in sending T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Slovakia transferred an S-300 long-range air defense system, but German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has hesitated to approve the sale of tanks and other heavy weapons, leading to an open rift within his government.

“What’s clear: Ukraine needs more military material, especially heavy weapons,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said earlier this week in an apparent shot at the recalcitrant chancellor. “Now is not the time for excuses; now is the time for creativity and pragmatism.”

Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer, has been prepared to deliver 50 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine, but the deal has been delayed in Berlin, to the dismay of neighboring officials.

“Every decision that is delayed, about sending weapons to Ukraine, is just so wrong,” Kopecny said. “It’s really historically important to make the right decision right now, for Germany … to show the generosity and the care for Europe as a peaceful continent, by sending what they can from their warehouses.”

Scholz unveiled a plan just days after Russian forces began to bomb Kyiv for Germany to rearm — a watershed break with decades of pacifist foreign policy on paper. Yet some NATO allies and analysts question whether Berlin will implement that plan, and, in any case, German warehouses are perceived as offering slim pickings in comparison to the U.S. arsenal.

“We spend so much time asking Germany for that military aid … Politically, it is important, and diplomatically,” the senior Ukrainian official said. “But, at the same time, nobody else but the U.S. has that military equipment we need in enough quantity.”

Kopecny expressed the “hope” that Western allies would hasten to scale up the deliveries of heavy weapons as Ukrainian troops demonstrate they can put the new deliveries to good use.

“My hope is that this is really like a test of some heavy weapons being delivered to the Ukrainian forces, and when they show how capable and effective, efficient, they are with them, much more will be shipped in the coming days and weeks,” he said.

And if those weapons are slow in coming, there will be more “dead Ukrainian guys” and more war crimes against Ukrainian civilians, the senior Ukrainian official maintained.

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“It’s completely clear that Ukrainians are not going to surrender,” the official said. “I’m pretty sure that we will liberate all the territory of Ukraine. And, just maybe, very few of us will survive to the very end to celebrate the victory, but we will have that victory anyhow.”