How NATO Could Establish Humanitarian Air Corridors

As Moscow thrashes about in Ukraine, unable to unwind an increasingly disastrous invasion, the situation is bleak for Ukraine’s non-combatant civilian population. Ceasefires on the ground to allow civilian passage out of Mariupol and Volnovakha have collapsed. With nothing on the horizon to relieve the situation, one humanitarian option is to establish a set of secure life-saving air corridors within Ukraine.

Time is of the essence. Within days, the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine will be intolerable.

In Europe, secure air corridors have been used for humanitarian purposes before. The United States, Britain and France employed humanitarian air corridors in 1948 and 1949, after the Soviet Union began a blockade of Berlin. The Berlin Airlift used three contested air corridors to resupply the besieged German city.

A similar approach can be employed today for Kyiv and, potentially, to support special humanitarian operations at other Ukraine cities.

Unlike a no-fly zone, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned would be “participation in the armed conflict,” humanitarian aid flights through declared and protected air corridors can be scheduled to deconflict with potential military air operations, while the corridors themselves need only be patrolled and monitored while humanitarian flights are in the air, moving food and critical goods into besieged cities and getting endangered refugees out of the war zone.

It’s Not A No Fly Zone, But A Whole New Thing

To ensure security on the ground, NATO’s air-mobile troops can move quickly to assume control of, say, Kyiv’s relatively intact Boryspil International Airport or a few other civil airfields in Western or Southern Ukraine, converting them into secure sites for receiving and processing refugees. With the airports secure, civilian aircraft or military transports can then fly food and equipment in—and take at-risk refugees out of the war.

NATO, fresh from the epic 2021 Kabul Airlift, already has experience in establishing a secure perimeter in a contested area. With the understanding—and potentially, cooperation—of responsible, professional elements in both the Ukraine and Russian military forces, a third-party humanitarian operation should be relatively cut-and-dried for NATO’s experienced logisticians.

If NATO can move 6,000 combat-ready troops thousands of miles, deploying into a chaotic, disorganized rabble, and then extract some 122,000 people, NATO can certainly manage to secure and operate an airport or two in a bordering country that, as yet, has not been pounded down completely into a World War II-like rubble pile.

This venture would not be without risk. But NATO has operated in risky environments before. U.S. and NATO forces have operated airports in close proximity to Russian forces or in hotly contested war zones in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Some fear Russia might try experimenting with chemical or battlefield nuclear weapons if urban combat goes poorly. A tripwire NATO presence at a nearby airstrip would make that sort of scenario a near impossibility.

Certainly, humanitarian efforts are risky. In the Berlin Airlift, 17 American and eight British aircraft were lost. Combat-ready fighters went eye-to-eye at times. But, with modern deconfliction and NATO air patrols able to suppress overenthusiastic pilots or deflect pot-shots from the ground, scheduled humanitarian flights through established corridors can proceed, helping to prevent a humanitarian crisis that risks permanently staining Russia’s military reputation.