Military Assistance to Ukraine and Its Significance in the Russo-Ukrainian War

Abstract

The interest of social sciences in the military dates back ages, and currently, special attention is being paid to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The present paper also follows this research trend, and it intends to analyze both the tactical and operational levels of war by investigating how the military assistance provided by Western states and international organizations to Ukraine is influencing the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Subsequently, the paper studies the military assistance in all three phases of the war, beginning from the invasion of Crimea, through the Donbas offensive, to the phase of Ukrainian counter-offensives. The research method used by this paper was to review and synthesize the existing but scarce and sometimes disinformative literature. The findings suggest that Western military aid began cautiously by providing only non-lethal, defensive weapons, but it was of crucial importance in the second phase of the war by guaranteeing heavy weaponry. The paper concludes that Western military assistance, especially from the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, and Germany, has had a significant role in the Russo-Ukrainian war, without which Ukrainian forces may not have persisted to now.

Keywords

• military assistance
• Russo-Ukrainian war
• weapons
• western countries