March, 2022
Washington — To end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible and to give hope to those now suffering, an ad hoc coalition of willing nations should mount immediate humanitarian rescue training exercises in adjacent countries. The exercises would pre-position food, water, shelter, and medicines for delivery into besieged Ukrainian cities along with the military defenses necessary to suppress attacks on the missions.
The exercises would include training to support the gathering of war crimes evidence by the International Criminal Court. The exercises would be conducted through multilateral agreements, not under the aegis of the UN or NATO, and would best be located in Poland and Romania.
These training exercises would signal Russia that large-scale humanitarian rescue efforts are being prepared in earnest, and that if Russia interferes, it will risk battlefield losses by its already under-achieving military. The self-defense of humanitarian missions to protect civilians is countenanced under international law. Military readiness to engage any attack on a humanitarian mission would be an integral part of the exercises.
The nations best suited to the exercises are a combination of both members and non-members of NATO and the ICC, such as Poland, Romania, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the U.S., the Baltic nations, Hungary, Slovakia, France, and Turkey.
The conduct of such exercises would also demonstrate that the opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not limited to economic sanctions and actions only through existing alliances, which adds to the reasons Russia should end the war before its options deteriorate further.
