NATO steps up military aid with tanks to Ukraine as Russia pulls back to focus on the breakaway east and Crimea

(Originally published April 6 in “What in the World“) The list of European nations expelling Russian diplomats in response to alleged war crimes continues to grow, further pushing Moscow into its echo chamber about the Western threat posed in Ukraine.

Yet after first saying that Russia’s pullback from Kyiv was merely a prelude to a new offensive there, NATO now says Russia is redeploying those forces to a new offensive aimed at Donbas and to create a land bridge to Crimea. Other military experts say the Kyiv attackers are spent and unlikely to be useful anywhere else for a while.

Nonetheless, NATO is escalating its military aid to Ukraine. The Czech Republic has begun supplying Ukraine with Soviet-made tanks. Both the Czechs and Slovakia are considering taking captured Russian tanks for repair and reuse by Ukraine’s forces. It’s unclear if Russian President Vladimir Putin will interpret this as the “interference” he warned would be considered direct involvement of NATO against Russia.

Even if the former Warsaw Pact nations don’t manage to touch off World War III, the West is preparing for one. Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced they will cooperate on developing hypersonic missiles, the kind China and Russia have developed to avoid missile-defense systems.

Meanwhile, back in the Pacific, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, has warned that Pyongyang would attack South Korea with nuclear weapons if it launched any preemptive strikes against its nuclear capabilities. Her threat was a response to an assertion by South Korea’s Defense Minister that Seoul has the capacity to strike North Korea’s nuclear launch sites.