At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, erstwhile Russian tanks were heading for Kiev, and the full country was attacked by Russian aviation and rocket troops, I was a supporter of NATO's closure of airspace over Ukraine. And I'm inactive in favour of that.
Now the facts of those days come out.
In this case, Zelenski called NATO: “I take it you do not send NATO land troops, although I disagree. However, I ask you to close the airspace. Don't let Russian planes, drones and helicopters fly and attack us. I know that NATO is able to do this — you have yet done something akin before”, referring to events in the 1990s erstwhile the Alliance closed the airspace over Bosnia and Herzegovina to prevent war crimes, and limited flights over northern Iraq to defend the Kurds.
The reason for the refusal was the fear that full air safety could not be ensured for NATO forces, due to the fact that — in order to effectively close airspace — the Russian air defence systems in Belarus and Russia would should be destroyed first. This could lead to escalation and an open NATO-Russia confrontation. As Biden said: “If a Russian plane or chopper appears in the air, we must shoot it down, and then we will be in a state of real war between NATO and Russia. We will not hazard planet War III for Ukraine."
If only aircraft, rockets and drones were shot down over Ukrainian territory, I do not believe that Russia would hazard starting planet War III. In the conventional war, she would lose decisively, and if she decided to go to a atomic war, it would be the end of life on Earth.
