Does NATO feel unsafe in Ukraine?

The traditional Sea Breeze naval exercise started in Ukraine on December 9, its third. Unlike the two previous ones, this year’s military show caused political outbursts neither in Verkhovna Rada nor Moscow. This time, however, NATO has certain reservations about maneuvers in Ukraine.

On two previous occasions Sea Breeze concentrated on rescue missions — e.g., in the aftermath of an earthquake — with ships providing help to surviving victims in a nonexistent country called first the Orange and then Coastal Republic. Those exercises involved warships and marines supplied by the participating countries. As a rule the exercise was planned together with the Ukrainian-US military cooperation program involving six NATO countries and as many partners of the alliance, because Sea Breeze was proclaimed in the spirit of the Partnership for Peace initiative.

This time, the exercise is fundamentally different, aided by a command staff and computer processor, based on the Western Naval District Headquarters of the Ukrainian Naval Forces in Odesa. No ships or troops were involved, but the military considers it at better than the previous ones, for the exercise is geared to polish cooperation between staffs and command centers in different countries during the course of peacekeeping operations. Naturally, the United States and Ukraine are taking part, along with Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Great Britain, Italy, Turkey, and Romania. Before the exercise started, the Russian media announced that Russia was not invited this year, to which the military in Kyiv replied that invitations had been forwarded to all interested parties, including those that had taken part in Sea Breeze in 1998. At the time the Black Sea Navy was represented by two warships among 30 others from 11 countries. A week before the naval exercise, the Ukrainian Defense Minister declared that Kyiv was interested in effective military cooperation with both the CIS and NATO countries. Hence, this year’s Sea Breeze is held against a relatively calm political backdrop, although it is the NATO countries’ turn to feel concerned about conditions in Ukraine. Last week, the NATO leadership said at a session of the Euro- Atlantic Partnership Council that they wished Kyiv had taken care of the legal aspect of such joint programs. The Ukrainian Parliament does not seem to have the guts to ratify SOFA legally defining the status of foreign military units participating in PfP projects on the territory of Ukraine. Considering that this agreement is still legally invalid, NATO intimates that foreign troops cannot feel safe or secure in Ukraine.