September 16, 2024: Ukraine has been a strange war, especially when it comes to the relationship between Russian and American defense officials. The Russian defense minister often calls his American counterpart to complain about something he thinks the Americans are involved with in Ukraine. The Americans are open to the Russian defense minister about such matters. This is because the Americans and Russians are not at war and both countries want to keep it that way. Despite the fighting in Ukraine and the substantial support Ukraine received from the United States, the Russians want to remain in touch. The Americans are often asked if they are involved in secret Ukrainian operations against Russia and the response is usually a shrug or a denial.

Early in the war the Ukrainians discovered that they could ignore the many prohibitions the Americans had placed on the use of American weapons. By just denying they had done something, the Americans accepted that and were similarly uninformative to complaints about it from the Russian defense minister.

Officially, the Ukrainians are not supposed to fire Americans missiles into Russia. Unofficially the Americans don’t question Ukrainian denials about such use of U.S. weapons. The Ukrainians have built their own long range attack drones and used them against targets deep inside of Russia. The Americans can’t complain about that. So when the Ukrainians fire a U.S. missile into Russia, the Ukrainians just tell the Americans it was another Ukrainian missile and that the Russians are lying. Given the long history of Russian deceptions and lying to the United States, the Ukrainians know what the Americans will think about Russian complaints. A recent example of this was Russian threats to attack American targets in Europe using saboteurs or mercenaries. There were some Russian sabotage operations inside Europe, but when the Europeans complained and threatened to increase their support for Ukraine, the Russians backed off.