UK Won't Rule Out Sending F-35s to Ukraine

The UK has said the F-35s are not feasible to send at the moment because they require extensive training.

Ukraine now says it needs the U.S.’s most advanced warplane, the F-35, to wage a successful war against Russia. (U.S. Air Force)

We’ve been told that Ukraine has been winning the war since the first Russian tank rolled into the country.

But that Western propaganda has been losing steam in recent weeks. The Polish president said last month that Ukraine may not “survive” conflict with Russia and a top Ukrainian official said last weekend that a victory is impossible without an advanced air force.

The Ukrainian air force is generally comprised of Soviet-era Russian fighters, mainly the Mig-29, which first flew in 1977.

“A victory of Ukraine without modern air force is scarcely imaginable,” Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s deputy foreign affairs minister, said. “That’s why we urgently need Western fighter jets like F-16 & F35 as well as Eurofighter & Tornado. Let’s do it together dear allies in DC & Berlin.”

Andrij Melnyk @MelnykAndrij

Hallelujah! Jesus Christ! And now, dear allies, let‘s establish a powerful fighter jet coalition for Ukraine with F-16 & F-35, Eurofighter & Tornado, Rafale & Gripen jets & everything you can deliver to save Ukraine💪

We first reported that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said Tuesday that these jets are “extremely sophisticated and take months to learn how to fly,” Politico reported.

“Given that, we believe it is not practical to send those jets into Ukraine. Obviously we will continue to provide and accelerate our military support to Ukraine and to listen carefully to their requests,” the spokesman said.

The opinion seemed to shift in London.

Ben Wallace, the UK defense secretary, said Britain has yet to make a “solid decision” on the issue.

“I’ve been involved with this for a pretty long time. And I’ve learned two things: never rule anything in and never rule anything out... For now, I don’t think that’s the right approach … What’s going to move on this conflict this year is going to be the ability for Ukrainians to deploy western armor against Russia,” he said.

The Trends Journal reported this week that just hours after the U.S. announced that it will provide Ukraine with its M1 Abrams tanks, a top White House official admitted that there is an ongoing debate in Washington about providing Kyiv with fourth-generation F-16 fighters.

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John Finer, the White House deputy national security advisor, said in an interview last week that the U.S. is “willing to consider” sending these jets to Ukraine and is “discussing this very carefully.”

Ukraine has been pushing for the U.S. to provide these fighters since the first Russian tank rolled into the country on 24 February.

Despite the scores of billions of dollars of weapons and aid sent to Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs who said no country has done enough to help Ukraine, tweeted that Kyiv has “new tasks ahead,” and identified western fighter jets as a goal. 

Col. Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman of the Air Force Command from Ukraine, said in July that two squadrons of 12 F-16s, and some reserves, would turn the tide of the war. 

“To learn the first stage of takeoff and landing and flying from point A to point B, it will take a few weeks, but to learn how to fight on it, to learn how to use missiles, we will take around six months,” Ihnat told Air Force magazine.

TREND FORECAST: No amount of weapons is ever going to be enough for Ukraine, since Russia will defeat them. Again, Russia has some 20 percent more Ukrainian territory than they had before their invasion and some 70 percent of Ukraine’s power and water infrastructure have been destroyed.