Blumenthal in Poland

Schumer, Blumenthal, Murphy

In mid-March – comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb – U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was in Poland, condoling with Ukrainian refugees. Poland borders Ukraine, an outgunned country under siege for months by Russia. Indeed, a piece in the Hartford Courant --  In Poland, Sen. Blumenthal sees desperation, misery among Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian army as bombs land within 15 miles of border – tells us that Blumenthal did not enter the war zone in Ukraine because “Our ever-vigilant security would not allow us to cross the border. The authorities didn’t want us to go anywhere near the site. We didn’t see the destruction. We were 12 miles away. But we met refugees, and we talked to Polish authorities who were there at the time.”

Blumenthal promised to bring home with him certain indisputable “takeaways” from his visit, one of which is “the urgency of providing more military support — whether planes like the MiG29s or anti-aircraft batteries or drones to give Ukraine a better means of air defense. These bombings today emphasize the urgency of providing this immediate assistance because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s air superiority is enabling him to slaughter and terrorize the Ukrainian people.

“As valiant and as skilled as the Ukrainian fighters are on the ground, they need more Javelin and Stinger missiles to counter the tanks and the artillery, as well as the aircraft. They need more effective means of air defense. They need more Javelin missiles to fight the tanks. They have proved enormously effective. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have a clear to-do list when I go back to colleagues this week, and I will be telling them what we’ve seen and heard.”

Blumenthal seems to be saying that Ukraine could make good use of the 28 MiG29s that Poland wishes to send to Ukraine. Poland and Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby are at loggerheads concerning the necessity and usefulness of adding to Ukraine’s air fleet.

On March 9, Kirby announced, “We [the Pentagon] assess that adding aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is not likely to significantly change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force relative to Russian capabilities. Therefore, we believe that the gain from transferring those MiG-29s is low.”

Writing on March 10 in National Review, senior political correspondent Jim Garrety did the math and wondered how the addition of Poland’s 28 jets to Ukraine’s diminishing fleet would not be helpful.

“Clearly,” Garrety wrote, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country’s military see it differently. It is simple math. In a fight against an invading Russian army, would you rather have 36 MiG-29s, or add Poland’s 28 jets and have 64 MiG-29s available to patrol the skies and attack invading Russians? Adding Poland’s jets would nearly double the amount of MiG-29s that Ukraine can bring to the fight.”

Blumenthal has visited Ukraine several times and apparently is on speaking terms with the beleaguered Zelenskyy, very soon – unless those MiGs are shipped, along with other necessary defensive weapons mentioned by Blumenthal – to be a virtual prisoner in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine.

Garrety and Zelenskyy and Blumenthal are right about the MiGs. There is not a single solider in Connecticut who does not know that victory on the ground is secured by victory in the air. A no-fly zone over Ukraine enforced not on the Russians but only on Ukrainians and their allies, Congressmen like Blumenthal and Connecticut’s Junior U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, both of whom have expressed solidarity with Zelenskyy, is a death sentence for the civilian populations in various Ukrainian cities at the hands of a ruthless, superior and unchallenged Russian air force.

But there is more. Refugees are flowing from Ukraine to points west such as Poland, Romania etc. At the same time Russia’s invading force is attempting to close off escape routes so that an urban civilian population, succumbing to terror, will lose heart. The Black Sea has already been effectively closed to shipping. Ukraine, known as the “breadbasket of Europe” since Roman times, has shut down its harvest. The last time a Ukrainian harvest was interrupted in 1932-33 by Joseph Stalin, a mass starvation was produced, the Holodomor, that destroyed, according to Robert Conquest, 8-10 million Ukrainians.

Rescue and relief lanes can only be kept open when the skies over Ukraine and Poland and the Baltic States are not owned by Russia. Putin cannot will the ends – the destruction of non-NATO countries bordering Russia as well as NATO countries – without willing the means to his ends. Are the United States and the West prepared to suffer – in solidarity with Ukraine, of course – yet another Holodomor, the 1932-33 Stalin engineered famine that resulted in the deaths of 8-10 million people?

Blumenthal should make a strenuous effort to bring home to his countrymen an unambiguous answer to that question.