US will not supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, says Joe Biden$1:
Joe Biden said the US would not supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, in a brief exchange with reporters overnight, a significant and potentially terminal setback to Kyiv’s campaign to obtain the fast jets that had been rapidly gaining momentum.
The US president, when asked at the White House if his country would provide F-16s, answered simply “no”, a few days after national security officials had said Washington would be discussing the issue “very carefully” with allies.
John Kirby, the US national security council coordinator for strategic communications, later defended the decision, highlighting the other military aid the US has sent since the war started, which has a total value of $27.1bn.
“What I can tell you is that there’s a lot of capability that is being sent, and will be sent in the coming weeks and months,” Kirby told CNN.
Ukraine had begun a high-profile lobbying campaign for the fighters, manufactured by the US defence company Lockheed Martin, almost immediately after Germany and the US said they would supply their own tanks to Ukraine for the first time.
Other European leaders had indicated they were open-minded about supplying jets, as Ukraine tries to build up a fighting force based increasingly on western arms to break through the Russian lines in the spring.
Ukraine’s small air force has been reduced over the 11-month war, and while it has some jets still operational, it has at best a very limited capacity to take on Russia’s air force and help its ground forces attack entrenched Russian positions.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said on Monday evening that “nothing is excluded in principle” when asked about western fighter jets for Ukraine – but he then laid out a series of criteria before making a decision.
Any delivery would have to “not be escalatory”, Macron said, and the jets could “not be likely to hit Russian soil but purely to aid the resistance effort”. Arms supply must also not weaken the capacity of the French armed forces, he added.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, is due in Paris on Tuesday where he will meet Macron and his counterpart Sébastien Lecornu, as part of the country’s wider military lobbying effort.
But Biden’s remarks represent an obvious knockback and are likely to be based on concerns that the Kremlin could argue that F-16s could be used to hit targets inside Russia, and so could be readily interpreted by Moscow as a significant escalation in the war.
The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed earlier this month that a Russian defeat in Ukraine “may trigger a nuclear war”, although such alarmist rhetoric is treated with caution by western experts.
On Monday, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov argued that while western countries supplying arms led to Nato countries “more and more becoming directly involved in the conflict” it would not change the course of the war.
Washington previously intervened to stop Poland transferring its fleet of MiG-29s, familiar to Ukrainian pilots, in the early stages of the war – but Kyiv had hoped the climate would change given that the White House has authorised the supply of US-made Abrams tanks after several months of holding out.
That triggers the hope that Ukraine could eventually change Biden’s mind. On Monday, the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, wryly noted that “I think what we know about all these demands is that … the initial response is no and it ends up being yes.”
Ukraine said Poland had sent “positive signals” about supplying its own F-16s after Warsaw’s prime minister announced plans to lift the country’s defence spending to 4% of GDP. When asked about F-16s, Mateusz Morawiecki said: “We coordinate all actions aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s defence forces with our Nato partners.”
Dutch ministers have also previously said they would consider a request to supply the fighter jets with “an open mind”. There are about 3,000 F-16s operational worldwide and the jet is in service in 25 countries.
But on Monday, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte appeared to back away from comments by cabinet colleagues. He said while there were no taboos about the supply of F-16s, supplying them would be “a very big step” appearing alongside Macron.
A Ukrainian air force spokesperson has said it would take its pilots about six months to train on such fighter jets.
Stupid. The USAF is going to keep phasing them out as more F-35's enter service, so might as well let Ukraine have them where they'll put them to good use.
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