On the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Biden said Friday that he’s ruled out supplying the Ukrainian armed forces with F-16 fighter jets, no less than “for now.”
The 80-year-old president made the declaration during an interview with ABC News anchor David Muir, and comes despite repeated calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the multi-role aircraft.
“Look, we’re sending him what our seasoned military thinks he needs now,” Biden told Muir in the course of the White House interview.
“He needs tanks. He needs artillery. He needs air defense, including one other [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System]. There’s things he needs now that we’re sending him to place him able to give you the chance to make gains this spring and this summer going into the autumn,” the president said.
“He doesn’t need F-16s now,” Biden added. “There isn’t any basis upon which there may be a rationale, in accordance with our military, now, to supply F-16s.”
When Muir prodded further, asking the commander in chief if he wasn’t ruling out sending Ukraine fighter jets in the longer term, Biden said, “I’m ruling it out, for now.”
Last month, in a shocking reversal from the Pentagon’s opposition, Biden announced that the US would supply Ukraine with 31 M1 Abrams tanks.
The choice got here after months of deliberations as Ukraine pleaded for tanks ahead of a renewed Russian offensive expected this spring.
However the Biden administration has firmly resisted sending fighter aircraft to the previous Soviet state, as produce other nations, resembling Poland.
Ukraine has reportedly been quietly lobbying the US since no less than last fall for F-16s.
Most recently, top Ukrainian officials met with Democrats and Republicans from the Senate and House on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, urging them to press Biden on the F-16 issue.
“They told us that they need [F-16s] to suppress enemy air defenses so that they could get their drones” past the Russian front lines, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told Reuters last Saturday.
The president’s remarks on Friday echo his unequivocal “no” response from last month when asked about sending Ukraine fighter jets to fend off the Russian invasion.
To mark Friday’s anniversary of the beginning of the conflict, the US pledged to send one other $2 billion in military aid to Kyiv.
The brand new package includes aerial drones, ammunition for rocket systems and howitzers, and mine-clearing and communications equipment, the Pentagon said.
