Why we can't have a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine

The idea of a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been widely discussed, and president Zelensky has repeatedly called for it.  But NATO refuses to take this step, and rightly so.

A no-fly zone would need to be enforced by NATO, and that would mean shooting down Russian planes which refused to abide by it, as they surely would.  Thus Russian fighter pilots would be getting killed by NATO pilots -- and vice versa, once the Russians started shooting back at the NATO planes which were shooting their own planes down.

That is, we would have an actual shooting war between NATO and Russia, something we (and, generally, Russia too) have always been at pains to avoid, because it's too dangerous.  Once the two nuclear superpowers are actually at war with each other -- in the literal sense of shooting at and killing each others' forces, not mere rhetoric -- the conflict is likely to escalate, and given the unpredictability of warfare and the mistaken information and communication errors which abound, there's too much risk of one side or the other deciding that things have reached the point where a nuclear response is warranted.  Even a limited nuclear action, such as a low-yield detonation over Ukrainian territory or over the sea near an enemy coastline as a "warning shot", would cross a line which every nuclear-armed nation has been careful to avoid crossing since 1945.  The other side would have to respond, and might do so by escalating to a slightly more provocative and dangerous action, and so on.

Once the hard line of "no shooting war between NATO and Russia" is crossed, there is no other obvious hard line on the way to nuclear escalation and eventually to all-out nuclear war.  We would have abandoned one of the key rules which has prevented that catastrophe ever since the mid-twentieth-century when it became technologically possible for both sides to annihilate each other.

To put it in plain English, if NATO imposes a no-fly zone over Ukraine, we set out on a road which could easily end with you personally, dear reader, being burned alive in your home, along with a few hundred million other people.

Of course we need to make sacrifices to support a fellow democracy in Ukraine when its survival is at stake.  If we spend billions on weapons to send to the Ukrainians, or if gas goes to ten dollars per gallon for a few months, those are acceptable sacrifices -- trivial, even, considering what's at stake.  But we are not obligated to create a hugely-increased risk of the incineration of our whole country and of its allies (and of Russia).  I would argue that it is not morally allowable to do so.  Any government's first duty is to protect the safety of its own people and territory.  To the US government, the safety of American people and territory must come first -- as each NATO government must also protect its own, as its highest priority.

We and the other democracies are already providing a great deal of help to the Ukrainian resistance both in military aid and sanctions, and will continue to do so.  It's dubious how much good a no-fly zone would do, in any case.  Most of the destruction being inflicted on Ukraine's cities is being done by missiles and shelling, not by aircraft.  If Ukraine ends up under occupation, the West will continue to help the inevitable resistance for however long is necessary, as we did in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.  But given the course of the war so far, and the amazing effectiveness of the Ukrainian military, the chances are fairly good that it will end with Russian control being beaten back from all or most of Ukraine; if so, the West will continue to help rebuild the country and its defenses.  Under the actual existing circumstances, this is as much as we can do.

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Many of the vehicles in the giant convoy near Kyiv have re-deployed to new locations nearby.

In a further escalation, Russia has launched missile attacks on the cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk in the far west of Ukraine.

Ukrainians in Russian-controlled zones continue to protest and resist as best they can.

A child sings in a bomb shelter.

Video from a town near Kyiv shows a Russian tank destroying a civilian car without provocation.

A few days ago this disturbing photograph was released, of refugees who had been attacked by Russian forces.  The woman and the two children were already dead, and the soldiers were trying to save the man, who was still alive (he later died).  The woman and children have now been identified.

A local man filmed the devastation in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv.

An 18-month-old child in Mariupol became one more casualty of Putin's war.

The Ukrainians have captured so much Russian equipment that Russia itself is materially contributing to the re-supply of Ukrainian forces (found via Hackwhackers).

Expats from Putin's puppet-state Belarus are forming their own unit to fight against the invasion of Ukraine.

See Ukrainians obliterate a Russian tank unit approaching Kyiv from the east.

This video gives a good overview of the logistical failures crippling the Russian invasion: