The decision to ship the supplies by road into Ukraine has emerged as a remarkable wartime improvisation, made necessary by the inability to fly aid into the country; Russian jets and radar and air defense systems make flights almost impossible. The weapons deliveries — missiles, small arms, body armor and ammunition — are being made to NATO countries along the border with Ukraine, where they are loaded onto Ukrainian trucks and driven to various locations along the front lines. The mission is reminiscent of the “rat lines” popularized by author Seymour Hersh, referring to a purported secret CIA effort to funnel weapons from neighboring countries to opposition forces in Syria a decade ago.
For security reasons, officials from several countries involved in the transfers to Ukraine declined to acknowledge where the weapons were crossing the border. But the Polish government has already announced it had shipped ammunition into Ukraine by road, and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said this week she was “able to get an agreement from Poland to make sure that that delivery could be done through their borders.”
Poland is unlikely to be the only hub for moving goods into Ukraine, especially if Russian troops push farther west, or the Russian air force begins targeting trucks coming across Ukraine’s borders as they have threatened to do if the resupply doesn’t cease.
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