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Why Ukraine called NATO to an emergency meeting
Summary
A look back at the days around 13 April 2021, when front-line deaths in Donbas and a Russian build-up prompted Kyiv to invoke a special partnership clause.
What pushed Kyiv to seek an emergency meeting with NATO? By 13 April 2021, the answer lay in a run of front-line losses in Donbas and in the build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine's border.
On 11 April 2021, a Ukrainian soldier was killed and another seriously wounded by artillery fire from Russian separatist forces on the front line in eastern Ukraine. That brought the number of troops killed in combat that year to 27.
On 12 April 2021, two more Ukrainian soldiers were killed in clashes with separatist forces in Donbas. Both died from small arms fire. The year's total of troops killed in action rose to 29.
An appeal to NATO
Also on 12 April 2021, Ukraine triggered Article 15 of the Charter on a Special Partnership with NATO. The step initiated an emergency meeting to discuss the Russian escalation in Donbas and the build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine's border.
The mechanism was not used often. It had last been triggered 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 that were attempting to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov on their way to the port of Mariupol.
What the sequence showed
Within two days, four Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, and Kyiv had turned to its partnership framework with the Alliance. The invocation tied the casualties on the front line to the wider concern about Russian forces massed near the border, and it placed both before NATO in an emergency format.
