On the third day of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin called a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense. Seated at the opposite end of an extraordinarily long table, Putin ordered them to “transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army”—which include its nuclear weapons—“to a special mode of combat duty.” The directive was aired on Russian national television. As Putin made his announcement, both Gerasimov and Shoigu looked surprised and uneasy.

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The Pentagon estimates that 600 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukrainian targets in the first 10 days of war alone. Additionally, the infamous abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant has been seized by Russian forces and, most recently, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Enerhodar has been attacked and occupied by armed Russian soldiers. Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and Russian projectiles started a localized fire in an auxiliary building on the site on March 3, 2020.

Russian forces have also cut off the power supply to the Chernobyl reactor and containment site. This means that spent nuclear fuel is not being cooled at the site in accordance to internationally recognized standards. The head of the Chernobyl nuclear plant has said that the back-up generators have enough fuel to power the site for 48 hours. We can only guess what might happen after that. If this were not enough, there is still ongoing shelling at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv. The current conditions there are unknown.

Despite these chaotic circumstances, the SaveEcoBot team, in coordination with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, has put a lot of effort into radiation monitoring and informing the public about changes in background radiation. We’ve been set back in this critical work by the damages done to our monitoring equipment by Russians, but Ukrainian technicians are restoring the systems as fast as they can.

The assaults on the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia power plants have already had implications for the environment. The radioactive dust raised by the wheels and trucks of the Russian combat vehicles in the Chernobyl zone has raised the background radiation levels to a hundredfold excess of the normal threshold. Just imagine what chaotic attacks, with Russians shooting, firing missiles, and bombing other parts of Ukrainian territory might lead to. In Ukraine, we have a saying, “мавпа з гранатою,” which means, “Like a monkey with a grenade." Russia is playing the monkey to all of Europe.

Russia continues to assert that its forces are in Ukraine for reasons of safety and security. The takeover of Chernobyl disturbed large amounts of radioactive soil, propelling it into the air. The attack on Zaporizhzhia resulted in a fire on the site of an active nuclear plant. This is not what safety looks like. To pretend that these actions are anything but a dangerous disregard for life is an insult to all sane, rational people. We are all very lucky that none of Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors were hit by the tank shell that started that fire.

Russia, the U.S. and the UK committed 20 years ago to ensure Ukraine’s peaceful sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons program. This agreement was built on the idea that Ukraine without nuclear weapons would never have cause to be the target of any attack. This assurance was guaranteed by the signers of the memorandum.

But Russia’s violent attacks have proven that a nuclear threat still exists in Ukraine. It is not a threat of Ukraine’s making, but one engineered by Russia’s own reckless assault on our civilian nuclear facilities. The consequences of this diabolical action go well beyond a potential environmental catastrophe for Ukraine; our neighbors, including Russia itself, and even countries outside of Europe could all be affected by nuclear fallout carried on high-atmosphere winds across continent and over oceans.

One way to mitigate this threat and to realize security assurances to Ukraine is to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The hesitance of the EU and U.S.  to implement a no-fly zone is understandable. But at the same time, it is critically important to develop options and generate models for other types of no-fly zones beyond the proposals being discussed today. Such alternative options could be the key to helping prevent a Ukrainian tragedy not only in terms of nuclear security, but also in averting a similar tragedy to what the world witnessed in Aleppo.

To do this, Ukraine needs more military support. We have gratefully received strong military support from our allies, but even this bounty is not enough to defend our country. Stinger missiles can shoot down small, low-flying aircraft from a fairly short distance, but are useless against ballistic missiles and high-altitude bombers. We need weapons that can shoot down planes at considerable distances and altitudes, systems to detect and shoot down cruise missiles, and planes to protect our airspace. Early Russian attacks targeted our airports to deplete our air defense capabilities and frustrate our ability to get planes in the air. But we still stand. But if we want to avert a second Chernobyl or another Aleppo, we need to strengthen our air defenses.

We learned in 1939 that making concessions to tyrants is no plan for peace. Putin is a bully. Like all bullies, he will take as much as he can get while treating all harm — including environmental harm — as merely incidental. Like all bullies, he will stop only when he meets strong resistance. Putin and the Russia propaganda machine frame all attempts to stymie Russian aggression as not only a provocation, but a provocation that could trigger a nuclear response. Such veiled threats of nuclear attacks are a form of prior restraint meant to constrain Ukraine’s allies from even suggesting that the Russian invasion is improper. But we must not accept this starkly irrational framework. Nuclear weapons are weapons of deterrence, not tools to chill diplomatic criticism.

American analysts say that they expect the Russian attacks to become increasingly more brutal. Any increased risks to civilian and military targets commensurately increases risks to nuclear sites as well. And any compromised nuclear facility in Ukraine inherently becomes an international problem, not just a local one. Like Putin, radioactive fallout does not respect borders.

Just ten days ago, my life changed dramatically. I used to be a successful civil leader and entrepreneur with an innovative business. Now I sleep on the floor of an abandoned building with my gun in hand. My daughter knows exactly how the air raid siren sounds. But we are still Ukrainians. We are still Europeans. We still count on our allies. So to our allies, I say: close the Ukrainian sky. Provide us with enough weapons. We will do the rest.

To learn more about fighter jets and the people who fly and maintain them, we spoke to CISAC senior fellow Dean Winslow, a professor of medicine and former Air Force colonel who has 1150 military flying hours including 431 combat hours and 263 combat sorties and extensive operational experience in fighter, tactical airlift, and combat rescue missions.

Winslow reached out to his former colleague, Ben Lambeth, a long-time specialist in international security affairs and air warfare with the RAND Corporation, who has extensive flight experience in more than 40 different combat aircraft types, including Eastern bloc aircraft. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Q: What did you make of this conversation between Ukraine, Poland and the United States?

Ben Lambeth: The Ukrainian AF has more than a couple dozen each of single-seat and combat-configured MiG-29s and Su-27s and presumably an equivalent or even larger-sized contingent of pilots trained to fly them. What is their current state of play? 

Also, why are the Ukrainians requesting Polish MiG-29s to begin with? Has much of the existing Ukrainian fighter force been destroyed on the ground by Russian air and cruise-missile strikes?

Q: How are MiG-29s used?

Dean Winslow: The primary mission is as an air superiority fighter, like our F 15 Eagle, so it's an air-to-air fighter.

Q: Can pilots who have trained in similar aircraft fly these jets?

Lambeth: At bottom, fighter pilots are fighter pilots the world over, and when given a problem, they will figure it out. If the Ukrainian AF is urgently asking for Polish MiG-29s, they must have a good reason for it and must believe that they will make a difference.

Winslow: It would not be too much of a stretch for a pilot, let's say who's already an experienced and qualified in a MiG 29 Ukrainian aircraft to fly a Polish aircraft.  As little as a couple of days of “differences training” between aircraft types (similar to what commercial airline pilots undergo routinely when transitioning from an earlier to a later model of a Boeing 737), would likely be adequate for an experienced MiG 29 pilot. Having either simulators or even low-tech procedures trainers would make such a transition even easier.

Lambeth: A mission-ready Su-27 pilot could probably get barely combat-qualified for air-to-air in a MiG-29 with a minimum of cross-training needed to master the involved procedures and switchology. Things like just starting the jet, getting the radar up, and mastering all the associated checklist procedures. This couldn't happen in just an hour or two, but possibly in a day or two.

Winslow: What separated the really, really good fighter pilots from people like me, who, you know, I'm just a reasonably competent civilian pilot, is the fact that a good fighter pilot has the amazing ability to not only maneuver the aircraft, but to also operate these incredibly complex weapons systems while flying at near supersonic speeds and experiencing high G forces.

I'm pretty sure that they have some type of what's called a pulse Doppler fire control radar system in their aircraft. And the software can be more or less sophisticated. I still can't talk about all of the features that we had in our Eagles, but I'm sure now they're different because the last time I was in a F-15 was 26 years ago. But even then, the software that supported the radar was very sophisticated. And learning how to operate the fire control radar and all the different modes that you would need to track and target multiple aircraft simultaneously is challenging. In addition, these aircraft have sophisticated threat warning systems for detection and tracking of surface to air and air to air threats.

Q: How difficult is it to maintain the aircraft?

Winslow: I hate to use the word supply chain. People are now using that term a lot in the civilian world too—but the challenge of maintaining adequate supplies of spare parts that you would need to maintain that aircraft is formidable.

Dean Winslow with Maj Bob Coffman with F-15B after flying NATO mission, RAF Lossiemouth (Scotland), 1990.

While these are modern aircraft, they still are incredibly maintenance intensive. I think with the F-4 Phantom that we figured that usually it was something like for every hour the aircraft flew, it was as much as 12 to 15 man/woman hours to keep them mission ready.

(Dean Winslow with Maj Bob Coffman with F-15B after flying NATO mission, RAF Lossiemouth (Scotland), 1990.)