I woke up this morning thinking about Airlifts. I remember those WW II newsreels showing supplies being delivered by parachutes over combat theaters. Some were for weapons; others were for humanitarian relief. I bet you have seen the same images.
My thought experiment involves providing humanitarian aid to Ukranians who are, to all intents and purposes, prisoners in their cities under siege. They need clean water, food, sanitary supplies, medicines, and other non-military necessities to simply keep body and soul together. Putin wants them to starve to death, and he needs to know that the rest of the world will not just stand around and let that happen. We won’t allow Putin’s army to create de facto concentration camps of what were formerly peaceful cities.
So, let’s say that the US and a “coalition of the willing” assemble a humanitarian relief airlift in order to deliver supplies by means of low-level flights parachuting supplies to Ukrainian towns and cities under siege – particularly those whose evacuation corridors have been blockaded. We notify Russia of when these deliveries will take place, and we tell them that if they open the corridors for civilian evacuees, we will stop the airlifts. We also tell them that if they fire on our planes, we will consider that an act of war that signals their willingness to accept our proportional military response.
It doesn’t matter with Russia agrees or disagrees with the airlift; Russia just needs to understand that if they interfere, the coalition will respond in kind.