What Ukraine asked of NATO in April 2021

What was Ukraine asking of its Western partners as 14 April 2021 arrived? The answer lay in two reports from 12 April, which showed pressure building at the front and a formal request for consultations in Brussels.

On 12 April, two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in clashes with separatist forces in the Donbass. Both died from small arms fire. Their deaths brought the number of Ukrainian troops killed in action that year to 29.

The same day, Kyiv took a diplomatic step. Ukraine triggered Article 15 of the Charter on a Special Partnership with NATO, which opened the way to an emergency meeting. The stated purpose was to discuss the Russian escalation in Donbass and the build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine's border.

A mechanism used before

The article had been invoked once previously, in 2018, during the Kerch Strait incident. On 25 November 2018, Russian Federal Security Service coast guard vessels fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels. They had been trying to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov on their way to the port of Mariupol. It was the first time Russian forces had openly engaged Ukrainian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War.

By invoking the charter again, Ukraine placed the situation on its borders and in Donbass in the same category of concern as that 2018 confrontation, at least in procedural terms.

The picture on 14 April 2021

Taken together, the reports from 12 April describe a two-track approach: continuing losses along the front line, and a formal appeal to the alliance over Russian military activity near the border. Ukraine sought to bring those concerns before NATO partners in an emergency format.