40 Nations Meet at Ramstein to Coordinate Ukraine Aid and Further Integrate Ukraine Into NATO – Opinion

On Tuesday, over forty nations participated in a meeting held at Ramstein AFB (Germany), which was chaired and conducted by Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense. The purpose of the meeting was to identify the arms and munitions Ukraine needs not to defend itself but to defeat Russia in Putin’s War; see NATO Strategy Shifts From Ukraine Must Be Defended to Russia Must Lose and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken Visit Kiev Bringing Gifts and Bad News for Vladimir Putin. It was attended by Australia, Japan and South Korea, as well as European nations. The meeting will meet monthly to discuss the war in Ukraine and its needs.

There were two main reasons this meeting was so important. It brings together the main players in the effort support Ukraine. In fact, over 20% of members of the United Nations attended. This alone was enough to send imagery ricocheting around the Kremlin, much like an APFSDS spiralling round the turrets of a T90 tank in Donbas. The model is also valuable for international cooperation. Instead of slurred organizations like the UN that are stuffed full of time-serving bureaucrats such as the UN, task-oriented, invited parties offer greater promise to deal with security problems quickly and efficiently.

A very significant thing also happened. It was confirmed that I was right. You know me well enough to know that I am happy when proven wrong.

Many moons ago, back when people actually read DailyKos, one of their diarists described me as someone who’d rather pull off his own head than admit being wrong. Guilty as Charged

Nearly three weeks ago, I wrote this article: Ukraine Has Joined NATO Whether Russia Likes It or Not, and More Are Yet to Follow.

It was clear that equipment being transferred to Ukraine no longer had to come from Russia, but NATO. New equipment will replace the Soviet-era gear that the Ukrainians are stuck with. NATO standardization is now possible for ammunition, parts, training and tactics.

NATO will eventually provide Ukraine real tanks and combat vehicles in order to replace Russian scrapheaps that they and their Army use. Ukraine will then be trained and equipped like other NATO countries.

We are witnessing a total integration of Ukraine in NATO, without any official declaration. NATO is arming, training, providing supplies, as well as operational intelligence and planning to Ukrainian troops. We can anticipate major repairs to Ukrainian equipment being performed in the near future. Inevitably, new Ukrainian formations will be organized and trained in areas that Russian missiles can’t hit. We are also seeing a complete reversal of where NATO was just a couple of weeks ago, Department of Defense Dithers Over Armored Vehicles for Ukraine as Time for Action Slips Away.

Euromaidan Press Ukraine, an outlet that focuses on Ukrainian issues, reported the Ramstein Meeting and took Oleksiy Reznikov’s quote:

“For a long time, we have been working to convince our partners that it is appropriate to provide Ukraine with Western-compliant weapons that meet NATO standards.

Finally, the strategic decision has been taken to convert Ukraine to Western technology. In particular, we are already receiving 155-mm artillery.

This will eventually ensure that the Ukrainian army and the NATO armed forces are fully interoperable., which will result in a significant strengthening of the Alliance’s eastern flank.

I will admit – three months ago an achievement like this would have been considered almost impossible. But thanks to the courage and professionalism of Ukrainian defenders, and the resilience of the Ukrainian people, everything has changed.”

This is only the beginning of standardizing artillery ammo. NATO standardization and Western infantry fighting vehicle are in process. Only weeks are left before NATO’s older tanks enter the battlefield. Not to be overlooked is the NATO compliant C3I (Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence–or whatever they call it this week) equipment and procedures that will convert drone- and sensor-supplied data into targeting information.

The invasion of Ukraine will go down as one of the most visible “own goals” in geopolitical history. Although one of its stated objectives was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO–something that obviously was not going to happen–it has resulted in Ukraine becoming a de factoNATO member and persuading Finland and Sweden into the deal