In Conversation | Dominik Jankowski
Understanding NATO's role in Russia's war against Ukraine.
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The following conversation has been edited for clarity. The views expressed in this episode are the guest’s own.
Rick Landgraf: Joining us today is Dominik Jankowski. He's a Polish security policy expert, diplomat, and think tanker. He currently serves as the Deputy Ambassador of Poland to NATO and previously served as policy advisor in the office of the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg. Dominic, welcome to the show.
Dominik P. Jankowski: Thanks for having me.
RL: Dominik, you're joining us from Brussels today and just want to first say that to our audience, the views that are expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of other institutions. Dominic, I want to dive kind of right into this from your point of view, both from the country standpoint of Poland and then also as the NATO organization. What has NATO's role been in the Ukraine war thus far?
DJ: So, I mean, NATO from the beginning had a very clear goal, which is defending allied territory and making sure that there is no spillover effect from Russia against Ukraine into allied territory. I think when you look at that, NATO has succeeded in that role. I mean, the war basically remains between Russia and Ukraine, and of course the NATO deterrence and defense policy work. But of course, apart from that element, NATO gradually looked into how collectively we can as the Alliance support Ukraine. In all frankness at the beginning in 2022, there was a lot of reluctance about what NATO’s role should be.
There were a lot of discussions about any potential escalatory elements that NATO's direct support to Ukraine can cause, which could potentially lead to a direct Russia-NATO war. So since then, NATO has basically concentrated on providing non-lethal support to Ukraine through a so-called comprehensive assistance package, which basically is an instrument to which allies contribute financially and in kind, which covers elements from medical support to counter drone measures. But NATO, until right now, is not providing direct military support to Ukraine. That's done through the coalitions under the US leadership, such as the UDCG (Ukraine Defense Contact Group).
RL: So just to be clear for our listeners, the comprehensive assistance package, as you mentioned, was a structure that preceded Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was stood up a few years back, well before the full-scale invasion. Is that correct?
DJ: That's absolutely correct. The comprehensive assistance package was agreed in 2016 at the NATO summit in Warsaw and since 2016 has been used to support Ukraine. So in 2022, when the Russian aggression against Ukraine also caught NATO by surprise, we had limited instruments in our disposal. So one of the instruments then existed and worked was a comprehensive assistant package. So we basically decided back then in 2022 that we will boost this instrument and make it specifically designed to help Ukraine in the short term. But as I said at the beginning, only for non-lethal support. So basically this instrument is still in function, I mean, there are multiple allies contributing financially to the CAP (Comprehensive Assistance Package). In fact, there are also partners of NATO financially contributing to CAP, such as Australia or Japan. So this instrument is still there, but a lot of allies are saying this is not enough. We need to go one step further and try to do things that we have not done since 2022.
RL: Yeah, I find that really interesting that that, in terms of NATO's role and NATO support, focuses more on the non-lethal aspect of support through structures like the comprehensive assistance package. But individual countries are providing both non-lethal and lethal support. Can you highlight and tell us how your country, Poland, has supported Ukraine so far.
DJ: Polish support started already in February 2022. In fact, the first donation of ammunition started in December 2021 and then in January 2022. But then since the beginning of the aggression, basically we were among the few allied countries that did not really impose any restrictions on what and how we are delivering support to Ukraine. We were the first one to provide main battle tanks, of course, post-Soviet ones, but in numbers that exceeded any other ally back then in 2022. Over 350 tanks were provided to Ukraine directly from our own stocks and directly from our own units. So that's one. We were also the first ones to start the discussion about providing fighter jets, and, since 2022, we have provided a number of MiG-29s directly to Ukraine. They are already being used by the Ukrainian Air Force.
Throughout those years, we were at this particular moment in history where we knew that we needed to basically use our own resources directly from our own operational units and send them to Ukraine. So basically there is nothing that we have not provided to Ukraine, MANPADS (man portable air-defense systems), missile defense systems, armored vehicles, main battle tanks, fighter jets, millions of rounds of ammunition. One of the things that I would say we could have probably done better is how we STRATCOM (strategic command) those elements around.
A lot of the elements that I'm telling you about were not publicly disclosed. The numbers are still classified, so basically from time to time, I'm under the impression that some allies are doing a lot of STRATCOM around a smaller number of weapons that are provided to Ukraine. So look, I think we set the tone for the allies back in 2022 on what could have been delivered to Ukraine in terms of high-end capabilities and of course the pace was important. I think March and April 2022 were decisive for Ukraine. During those months and weeks I think the Polish support played a key role.
RL: Now STRACOM or Strategic Communications, as you say, from your view, what are the that the benefits or drawbacks of any country, Poland or any other country, from putting out in the public the types of support that they're providing to Ukraine, whether specific weapon systems, specific platforms, versus the need and the desire to be more discreet about that?
DJ: I do believe that at this particular juncture of the war, I think we need to be more transparent of what we are providing. I mean, our citizens, our societies, after two years of that war, they expect us to be crystal clear what and how the defense budget is being spent in support of Ukraine. So I see an important strategic communications benefit in terms of communicating with your own societies, be it within Europe or also in the transatlantic dimension. But also I see a need to move towards a fair burden sharing between allies and when it comes to supporting Ukraine.
The lack of transparency also creates a situation in which some allies are punching above their weight in terms of how much they are providing to Ukraine. The good examples are the Baltic States, the three Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They have provided much more to Ukraine in comparison to their GDP than other allies, much richer allies in Europe. So for that reason, I do believe it's important. The drawbacks are we need to make sure that we also communicate things in a certain moment of time, not to make Russian intelligence activities much easier when it comes to moving those goods through allied and Ukrainian territory in terms of announcements of where those elements are going to be deployed, how the crews are going to be trained. So of course there is some level of secrecy that we would need as we go, but the overall goal, and I think that's also what we are trying to do in NATO right now, is to make sure that we have more transparency, which leads also to a fair burden sharing when it comes to support of Ukraine.
RL: I wanna zoom out a little bit for our audience and talk a little bit more about the NATO-Ukraine relationship and specifically why a country like Ukraine wants to join NATO. In many ways, Ukraine is in a position, very much like Poland or the Baltic States, where there's a history of Russian and Soviet aggression and these countries seek more security: seek a security guarantee as afforded through article five of native NATO membership. Can you speak a little bit about what NATO membership means for your country Poland or what it means for a country like Ukraine?
DJ: Being in NATO means that you are secure. I think the 24th of February, 2022, has clearly shown that if you are in NATO, the chances that you're going to be attacked by an adversary or an aggressor are much slimmer. Some people are saying NATO is not perfect. Sure, it's not perfect, but it gives you that security guarantee and this is why, for example, Poland in the 90s was pushing so hard to be a member of this alliance because it's a transatlantic alliance also. I think the United States' presence and role in NATO is something that a lot of countries in Europe are also very much attached to. So look, in 2022, or before the aggression, if you have asked me whether Finland and Sweden will be joining NATO soon, my answer would be no, because they want to be in that specific situation, not aligned with countries in the EU, but not in NATO. After the 24th of February, it was a very clear and very fast political decision in both Stockholm and Helsinki. They said, no in those circumstances, there is no other security guarantee than NATO. So for that reason, it's kind of self-evident that for Ukraine being in NATO means that it will not be attacked by Russia in the future or the chances of being attacked by Russia once again in the future are becoming slimmer and slimmer. It might sound cheesy, but NATO means security for countries like Poland and Ukraine.
RL: To be sure, one of the unforeseen consequences of the full scale invasion was Finland and Sweden discarding years and years of neutrality in favor of joining NATO. Certainly that was likely unforeseen by Vladimir Putin. I want to switch now to looking forward: You're in Brussels, you’re busy with the North Atlantic Council deliberations. I know the Secretary General is on the move in advance of the summit next month in Washington, trying to gain support and consensus for various decisions that will come out at the summit.
From your point of view, what big decisions or commitments do you expect or anticipate NATO making at the Washington Summit?
DJ: We are currently working in NATO on ah on a package of measures for Ukraine and they're both political and practical in nature to make sure that and we are not only committed to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but also we are bringing Ukraine closer to NATO because as agreed by allies, Ukraine will become a member of NATO in the future. So currently we're working on three, I would say, big projects or political decisions that we are supposed to take at the Washington summit in July. The first one is with regards to increasing NATO's footprint in coordinating lethal and non-lethal support to Ukraine. We are very close to agreeing then and very close to in fact moving NATO closer to what NATO should have been doing since 2022, which is coordinating allied support to Ukraine, all of that support when it comes to lethal and non-lethal military elements.
RL: Is this specifically the Ukraine defense contact group and bringing that under NATO?
DJ: We are not there yet. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group’s framework is really big. Currently we are looking at the substructures of Ukraine Defense Contact Group, and Security Assistance Group Ukraine, SAGU, being one of them. So NATO will not take over all the responsibilities which are currently being led by the US but we'll take over some of those functions. For example, in Poland, there is a big logistics hub in Jasów, for which around 90 percent of military support to Ukraine is being transferred. We are currently looking at a solution in which that hub, that node, becomes a NATO operated node. So I think it's still a step-by-step kind of approach, so we are not going to take over everything, also because we need to make sure that the support to Ukraine continues and it's as efficient as it is right now. But the long-term goal is to make sure that NATO has a clear role in long-term coordination of military support to Ukraine.
The second part of that, of those discussions that we are having right now, is how we can pledge financially to support Ukraine. There is this discussion about the famous 40 billion euros that Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been talking about. So basically pledging a certain amount by all allies and making that commitment a long-term one. This will be a difficult discussion as some allies prefer more flexibility in terms of how and what they deliver to Ukraine and they are not in favor of long-term financial commitments also due to changes of governments in European countries.
This is an important discussion that allies will still have to work on, but I do believe we'll have a decision in principle about a certain amount of money that allies will pledge to support Ukraine military, for example, over, let's say, the next year. After that, we'll review that and look at whether we need to change it. Finally, we need to also make a step forward when it comes to bringing Ukraine closer politically to NATO. So last year at the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, we agreed that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance. That's nothing new in all frankness, we have been saying that since 2008 since the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania. We are currently looking at formulas that are going to make that Ukrainian path towards NATO irreversible in its nature and looking for any solutions, political solutions, that are going to build that bridge between where Ukraine is right now and the end state, which is Ukraine's membership in this alliance. But this is also going to be a difficult discussion. Some allies very clearly say there will not be an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO at the summit in Washington.
RL: Any invitation on the political front, would entail a consensus among all thirty-two allies, correct?
DJ: That's correct. Every single ally would have to agree to do that, and we are not there yet. So as I said, I suspect that rather at the summit in Washington, we will be showing progress and making sure that Ukraine stays on that irreversible path towards NATO without inviting Ukraine to join the alliance. That would have to be decided later on and discussed later on.
RL: OK, we'll have to leave it there. So obviously, a lot to look forward to and come out of the Washington summit next month in Washington, DC, July 9th to 11th. Dominik Jankowski, thank you so much for joining us. It has been a pleasure speaking with you today.
DJ: Thanks for having me, Rick.