Forget about establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. It would be much more feasible to declare and secure humanitarian air corridors through the country to enable a modern-day Berlin Airlift for beleaguered civilians.
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.
