No-fly zone: what it is and whether Ukraine has a chance to get it
What is the problem?
#CloseTheSky is a flash mob Ukrainians have been running on social media since the first days of the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also joined the calls, asking in several videos: NATO should close the skies over Ukraine or give us planes and modern air defense systems, then Ukraine will be able to cope on its own.
However, at the last NATO summit on March 4, member countries did not agree on a closed sky over Ukraine. Alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the topic was discussed, but there was no agreement among the allies. However, our diplomats are trying to get the West's consent in another way: they are appealing to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
What is the solution?
To understand.
In fact, we are talking about two different requests. When we call for the provision of weapons to Ukraine, it is a question of selling them or, in fact, gifting them, as was the case with the Javelins. Then the Armed Forces must study the new weapons themselves and fight using them.
But the "no-fly zone" (NFZ), which is being talked about more often, is a step that the West must take. For it to appear, the United States or NATO must declare the skies over a country closed. Alternatively, the UN may call for this.
After such a decision, no military aircraft, helicopter, or drone has the right to be in our airspace. Most of all, this regime resembles a naval blockade, but for aviation.
In the case of Ukraine, only NATO can "close the sky." After all, the United States doesn't have its own air bases near us, so it needs Polish and Romanian airfields, and therefore the consent of these countries. There is even less hope for the UN because Russia has a veto in the Security Council.
How does it work?
If NATO does implement the NFZ, it will not formally participate in the war with Russia. The alliance will be a third party because it will ban everyone from flying and no one will bomb Russian troops on the ground. Our airspace will be monitored by radars of US or NATO troops, their planes will patrol Ukraine. If the violator is noticed, they will be offered a choice: "Leave the NFZ, land, or be shot down."
For Ukraine, this would be perhaps the most tangible help from the West. The Russian army has the upper hand in the air and has already used it to bomb peaceful neighborhoods in Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Bila Tserkva, and other cities. Speaking of hostilities, the Armed Forces have already shot down dozens of enemy planes and helicopters, but they are simply not physically able to cover all cities and villages in Ukraine.
Previously, Western countries established NFZs three times. In the 1990s, the United States established two such zones in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein's aircraft from shelling areas where Shiite and Kurdish Muslims lived. In 1993-1995, NATO closed the skies over Bosnia to end the war in Yugoslavia. And in 2011 the UN declared a no-fly zone in Libya, also to protect civilians (the implementation was monitored by ships and aircraft of Western countries).
In short, in all cases, the goal of №1 was to protect civilians, so Ukraine has every reason to demand the NFZ. Now US President Joe Biden has already admitted that the Russians are deliberately shooting at civilians. His Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda states in general: Putin has committed genocide in our country.
And our situation is more dangerous than the Bosnian one also because there are four nuclear power plants in Ukraine. One of them, in Zaporizhzhia, was fired upon and captured by the Russians. By the way, the US Embassy in Ukraine has already called it a war crime.
NATO now has the capacity to deploy the NFZ. The F-35 and F-16 fighters used by the Alliance are not inferior to Russian aircraft and are capable of stopping them (the F-35 is the world's most advanced fighter). American aircraft are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
On the other hand, closing the skies over almost all of Ukraine is a difficult task even for NATO. To block airspace over Libya, the Alliance has used 260 aircraft. There will be fewer of them here (in Libya, aviation also bombed ground targets), but it will still require powerful radars and a large group of aircraft. They will have to be collected and sent to Ukraine.
Patrolling more than 500,000 square kilometers (it is unlikely that NATO aircraft will operate over Crimea and temporarily occupied territories in the East of Ukraine) is also difficult. "According to various estimates, Russia is using about a hundred planes over Ukraine, and NATO would have to use even more planes," said Jiří Šedivý, former chief of staff of the Czech Armed Forces.
But the main problem, because of which we do not have NFZ, is different. As the Yugoslav experience has shown, it was not difficult to declare a no-fly zone with a UN resolution. However, the Bosnian Serbs simply ignored the decision and continued to use aircraft.
The NFZ only became operational after the Americans began patrolling the skies over Bosnia and shooting down violators.
NATO now understands that the declaration of closing the skies will not work on Putin, who is already violating international law. So the Russians will continue to bomb Ukrainian cities and to stop them, Allied forces will have to destroy Russian planes.
And Europeans and Americans are not ready for that yet. They are afraid that Moscow will then respond: for example, by missile or air strikes on Poland or the Baltic countries (this was said by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock). "If we do this [establish the NFZ], it could result in a full-scale war in Europe, involving even more countries, and it will cause even more suffering," Jens Stoltenberg explained.
However, discussions about NFZ continue and it is too early to report the final defeat. On March 4, spacecraft trajectory specialist Andrii Vasyliev (better known by his pseudonym Dorzh Batu) said he spoke at a closed-door meeting on the subject in the United States. According to him, the idea of "closed skies" has not been completely rejected, it is supported, in particular, by a number of American generals and Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is negotiating on something else with the allies. "We continue to work bilaterally with partners to obtain aircraft and air defense equipment," he said.
Perhaps this is another reason to fight for the no-fly zone. If it still fails, it makes sense that the allies will offer an alternative: for example, weapons against enemy aircraft. Thus, the media repeatedly reported on talks with Poland. Warsaw is said to be able to hand over MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine but wants guarantees from the United States. Negotiations on this are still ongoing.
Even more useful solutions!
As we have already noted, this issue has not yet been resolved and Ukraine still has a chance to establish a NFZ in the sky above it.
According to Lada Roslytska, Ph.D., founder, and managing partner of Black Trident, LLC, the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine is a unique case in international practice.
The expert writes on Vox Ukraine: "Throughout history, no no-fly zone has been required or implemented in cooperation with a sovereign state bombed by an aggressor with the threat of nuclear weapons. Ukraine's call for a no-fly zone is a unique case: it asks and calls peace-loving states to come and help protect its skies from aggressors."
Lada Roslytska also notes that in the short history of the no-fly zone concept (it has been implemented only three times since 1991), not all of them were created by the UN Security Council (UNSCR), and only one was implemented immediately by NATO forces. Non-flying zones were rather established by other states over the airspace of the aggressor states. Ukraine does not call to close the sky over the aggressor, Russia. It calls to close the sky above it. In this sense, the expert notes, closing the skies over Ukraine would be an "effective expansion of Western diplomacy."
In addition, military experts note that closing the skies over Ukraine, while a difficult task, can be accomplished by bypassing NATO's bureaucracy.
There are still chances to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, in particular, because of the pressure from NATO member states' citizens on their governments. That is why it is important to go to peaceful rallies in European cities, to call on governments to take more decisive action, to sign petitions, to spread calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine and not to let this agenda be forgotten.
