"The F-16 is not a panacea, but a totem of a fairer fight." These jets may not arrive in time to aid Ukraine’s spring offensive, but the announcement will already be influencing military and political calculations in the Kremlin. The F-16 decision is a big step in the right direction. "If we want Russia to be defeated, we should reverse this position. "We have restricted Kyiv to fighting in a way that we would not, and to take casualties that we would not. "But the West’s constrained donations to date have forced Ukraine to pursue grinding land tactics. Given the weakness of the VKS, this is no pipe dream. "Nato would fight Russia by winning the air battle first, and then using air superiority to drive a more efficient land battle. "There is a moral dimension to consider," he says in an article for the FT. Joe Biden announced this week that the US wold help train Ukrainian pilots to fly the aircraft, suggesting that NATO member states are to begin supplying them to Kyiv.Įdward Stringer, a retired RAF Air Marshal who was formerly director-general of Joint Force Development at the UK Ministry of Defence, back the move - and argued that western nations had been forcing Ukraine to wage a form of war that they would never countenance for their own forces. Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy has long urged western powers to provide his country with F-16 fighter jets to aid its efforts to overcome Russian forces.
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