Biden says US won’t provide Ukraine with fighter jets
Mike Brest
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President Joe Biden said the United States will not provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, which has been a main request from Kyiv.
Biden told reporters on the South Lawn on Monday afternoon “no” when asked if the U.S. would fulfill this request from Kyiv, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his country’s Western allies to speed up its weapons shipments.
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“It is very important to maintain the dynamics of defense support from our partners. The speed of supply has been and will be one of the key factors in this war. Russia hopes to drag out the war, to exhaust our forces. So we have to make time our weapon. We must speed up the events, speed up the supply and opening of new necessary weaponry options for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in his Sunday address.
Ukrainian officials have long asked for F-16s, though they renewed the request last week after Biden ended a stalemate among allies regarding whether to provide Ukraine with tanks by agreeing to send 31 M1A2 Abrams tanks. The issue of the dispute was Germany’s unwillingness to provide tanks to Ukraine, demanding the U.S. do the same despite American defense officials repeatedly saying the significant maintenance and logistical requirements make the tanks not worth providing.
A Ukrainian official reiterated the request for fighter jets the day after Biden announced the aid package of tanks.
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said last week that the tanks “will take many months before they can get on the ground” and would not confirm they would reach Ukraine by the end of 2023, while the German-provided Leopard tanks should arrive by the end of March, the Germans announced.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Monday that Russia is allocating significant manpower for its offensive in Ukraine in the spring, likely north of 200,000 troops.
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“But the challenge is that we don’t see any signs that President Putin and the rulers in Moscow are preparing for peace. We see the opposite. We see that they are preparing for more war, that they are mobilizing more soldiers, more than 200,000, and potentially even more than that,” the NATO leader said on Monday while traveling in South Korea.