AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 1, 2015 37
In the space sector, Canada pulled a
satellite from the launch manifest of a
Soyuz rocket variant. Manufacturers
began stockpiling titanium, fearing
troubles in obtaining the important
metal from Russian suppliers. And the
U.S. moved to develop a big new rocket
engine to replace a Russian powerplant
used on vehicles that launch military
and intelligence satellites.
In commercial aviation, Malaysia
had one it its airliners shot out of the
sky. The Netherlands lost hundreds of
its citizens. Airlines around the world
lost confidence in the intelligence they
receive regarding the safety of over-
flights. And individual air carriers be-
came political weapons.
In 2014, no other person has had
such a sweeping impact on aerospace
and aviation—for better or worse. And
for all but the most cynical of observ-
ers, Putin’s far-reaching impact has
definitely been for the worse. Because
of this, he is the 2014 Person of the Year.
MILITARY
Russia’s military claims that the thou-
sands of militants who took control of
large swaths of Eastern Ukraine dur-
ing the spring and summer of 2014
were not actually working with Rus-
sian forces. Moscow also denies that
its forces supplied the militants with
high-tech weaponry. Rather, leaders
contend, the militants acted indepen-
dently, calling for the same rights as
those in now-annexed Crimea.
Yet NATO says several hundred
Russian combat troops are inside the
region advising and training separat-
ists, and that several thousand more
Russian personnel equipped with
heavy weaponry are sitting on the
Ukrainian border and are, according
to the alliance, “capable of destabiliz-
ing the situation at very short notice.”
Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy
forces was perhaps not well understood
before this year, but it is a capability—
along with the modernization of its
strategic and air forces—which Putin
has been building since he first became
president in 2000 (see page 40).
These actions have reverberated
across Europe, dramatically altering
the posture of European military forces
and the defense industrial outlook.
Ukraine is woefully underequipped
to fight the most significant conflict
on European soil since the wars in
the Balkans during the 1990s. Almost
a quarter of a century after indepen-
dence, its armed forces are still using
the aircraft, helicopters and vehicles
Russia left it with in 1991. And its per-
sonnel lack the experience for a con-
flict against well-armed insurgents
who raided army depots and govern-
ment buildings, helping themselves to
weaponry that included man-portable
surface-to-air missiles.
Ukrainian military ofcials say their
country is in a condition of war with
the Russian Federation. “We cannot
politically declare [war] against it,”
said one Ukrainian ofcer in London
in November. “We cannot win it, and
no one will support it.”
Russia’s ambiguous use of “little
green men,” during its annexation of
Crimea was a masterstroke. Wearing
green fatigues and often black masks
but no national insignia, these Russian
soldiers could secure key locations
across the Crimean Peninsula and par-
alyze Ukrainian command and control.
The region was already home to a
significant Russian military presence,
including the Black Sea fleet in Sev-
astopol and several naval airbases.
That presence has grown. Intelligence
reports suggest that Russia may have
deployed short-range ballistic missiles;
strategic aviation units may follow in
the near future.
Since the beginning of 2014, the
Ukrainian air force lost 10 helicop-
ters—five Mil Mi-8 Hip transport and
five Mi-25 Hind attack types. It has also
lost five Sukhoi Su-25 “Frogfoot” fight-
ers, a pair of Mikoyan MiG-29 “Ful-
crums” and a Su-24 “Fencer.” Shoul-
der-launched weapons also downed
transports—an Antonov An-26 and an
An-30, along with one of three Il-76s fly-
ing a supply mission into Lughansk. In
the last attack, missiles were fired from
two diferent sites as the transport air-
craft made its landing approach.
Now five months into a nearly non-
existent cease-fire, Moscow’s motives
for military action in Eastern Ukraine
are far from clear. If anything, damageto East-West relations may actually be
growing; a palpable strain is fraying
the business ties forged between Rus-
sia and the West in recent years.
That change is particularly ap-
parent with France’s deal to sell two
Mistral-class helicopter assault ships
to Russia. In late November, despite
threats of contractual retaliation from
Moscow, French President Francois
Hollande indefinitely postponed deliv-
ery of the first Mistral-class helicop-
ter assault ship to Russia, citing the
Ukraine conflict. But since suspend-
ing the 2011 contract in September,
Hollande has been loath to cancel the
€1.12 billion ($1.32 billion) Mistral deal
with majority-state-owned shipbuild-
er DCNS, which has sufered anemic
growth in 2014.
Russia’s buildup along the Ukrainian
border—coupled with the decade-long
transformation of its military fueled by
the nation’s oil boom—has also forced
NATO and European states to take
heed. At a time when NATO members
were hoping their tempo of military
operations would slow with the with-
drawal from Afghanistan, a resurgent
Russia throwing its weight around at
the alliance’s eastern borders has pro-
vided new urgency to NATO’s call for
its members to spend more than 2% of
GDP on defense. They are being urged
to spend at least 20% of their defense
budgets on modernizing equipment.
Russia’s long shadow on the border
also prompted an increase in multi-
national exercises in Poland and Ro-
mania, while enhanced deployments
of fighters to the Baltic states have
helped to reassure those nations that
cannot aford fighters of their own.
Despite the declared cease-fire in
Ukraine, the level of Russian military
activity outside the country’s borders
has risen dramatically.
To allay fears in Estonia, Lithuania
and Latvia, Baltic Air Policing (BAP)
fighter detachments have been tripled.
NATO aircraft are now also based at
Amari in Estonia as well as at the usual
air-policing base at Siauliai, Lithuania.
Eastern European fighters have
been scrambled hundreds of times to
intercept Russian aircraft operating in
Baltic airspace. In just one day in early
December, BAP fighters intercepted
28 Russian aircraft, which were appar-
ently a part of a large naval exercise.
Meanwhile, the Royal Norwegian
Air Force, which has a standing NATO
mission to intercept military flightsVideo See an overview of some
of the actions and events that led
Aviation Week to choose Putin as Person of
the Year—tap here in the digital edition,
or go to AviationWeek.com/POYCheck 6 Aviation Week editors discuss
Putin’s military transformation
and NATO’s response:
AviationWeek.com/podcast