NATO Must Say No to Ukraine No-Fly Zone
A reckless idea has resurfaced the past few weeks.
In the past few weeks, Russian drones and jet fighters have repeatedly penetrated the airspace of Poland, Estonia, and other NATO members. Western officials have reacted harshly to those episodes, shooting down intruding drones and, in the case of President Donald Trump, issuing threats to attack even manned Russian aircraft if such incidents continue.
NATO leaders and their supporters in the news media are responding to the rising tensions by reviving an idea from the earliest days of the Kremlin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine: imposing a no-fly zone over that country. It is an especially provocative and dangerous scheme that carries a serious risk of triggering World War III.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately called for NATO to establish a no-fly zone when Russia invaded in 2022. However, President Joe Biden spurned the proposal, and NATO’s foreign ministers explicitly declined to take that step at a March 4 session. Even a majority of hardline figures in the West considered the move too dangerous, since it would lead to direct clashes between NATO and Russian aircraft. Support for the initiative was confined only to the most hawkish, reckless individuals and groups, such as then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Liz Cheney’s male alter ego. Even scholars at the Atlantic Council came out against it.
Zelensky has never relented in his quest for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, however. In June 2024, the president and his advisors pushed a more limited option of creating such a zone over just western Ukraine, relying on air defense systems in neighboring NATO countries to enforce it. Their logic was that using such weaponry to shoot Moscow’s planes out of the sky would be less dangerous than sending up NATO aircraft to intercept their Russian counterparts in Ukrainian airspace. After the surge in drone incursion incidents this September, Zelensky joined his Polish counterpart in again calling for NATO to install a no-fly zone over his country.
Kiev’s enthusiastic lobbyists in the West kept up the pressure as well. Writing in July 2023, Andreas Umland stated that imposing a no-fly zone was as imperative as ever. With the arrogant certitude so typical of Umland and his ideological compatriots, he casually dismissed warnings that offering such protection to Ukraine was unduly perilous. “Many observers see Western-backed no-fly zones over the Ukrainian hinterland as a path to World War III. But it is unlikely that such an escalation would occur, so long as Western troops are not deployed on the front lines.” Other pro-Ukraine lobbyists, such as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis, are still advocating the scheme of confronting Russian planes.
Imposing a Ukraine no-fly zone was an irresponsible idea when ultra-hawks first proposed it in 2022, and it is now even more so. NATO’s initial response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to adopt new economic sanctions against Moscow and to provide economic and limited military aid to Kiev. That involvement has expanded into a NATO proxy war against Russia. NATO members are not only supplying vast quantities of sophisticated offensive weaponry to Ukraine so that Kiev can attack targets deep inside Russia, but have also provided direct logistical assistance, including targeting data, to Ukrainian forces. The Wall Street Journal now reports that the United States is willing to give Kiev crucial intelligence assistance for such long-range missile strikes.
Vladimir Putin’s government has remained surprisingly patient and restrained with respect to such growing provocations. But Moscow’s patience is not infinite. Putin and other high-level Russian officials have stated bluntly that NATO is waging war against their country. The Kremlin is now warning that it regards American military personnel who assist Kiev in operating Ukraine’s Patriot air defense systems as legitimate targets. Indeed, one such incident may already have taken place. The latest declaration is just one more indication about how alarming tensions between NATO and Russia are rising. For its part, Moscow appears to be probing the alliance’s air defense systems with the proliferation of drone and fighter plane incursions into the air space of NATO member states.
Attempting to impose a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine in such a dangerous, increasingly unstable political and military environment is virtually begging for trouble. NATO leaders have not yet officially endorsed the idea, but resistance to the scheme among prominent members of the Western foreign policy establishment is noticeably less vocal and extensive than it was in 2022 or 2023.
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Even flirting with the scheme is ill-advised. Russian leaders already were furious about how the United States and its allies contemptuously dismissed Moscow’s repeated warnings that making Ukraine a NATO member or de facto military asset would cross a bright red line and pose an existential threat to Russia’s security. Perceptive Western analyses warned about NATO’s tone deaf policy, but to no avail. Scott Horton’s splendid book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, provides the most detailed, sobering account of NATO’s policy malfeasance and the tragedy it caused.
Unfortunately, the NATO powers seem determined to repeat the blunder of ignoring Moscow’s new warnings and red lines with even worse potential consequences. The blustering, confrontational reaction of Washington and its allies to Russia’s growing intrusions into the airspace of NATO members conveys a contemptuous belief that the Kremlin is just bluffing—that Putin would never actually attack a member of the alliance and risk a devastating military response from a united NATO. Such confidence may be erroneous, just as the consensus that Moscow would not launch a full-scale war against Ukraine proved to be.
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s level of involvement in the conflict has escalated inexorably and dramatically. Over time, the NATO powers have become de facto belligerent parties in the war. Russian leaders now openly assert that NATO is waging a war against the Russian Federation. Trying to establish and enforce a no-fly zone could be the capstone to the Western process of escalation. Imposing and trying to enforce such a zone also might well be the action that sparks a regional or even global conflagration.
