KYIV, Ukraine/WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The United States will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia, President Joe Biden said on Monday, as Russian forces claimed a series of additional gains in the east of the country.
Ukraine planned to push for fourth-generation Western fighter jets such as the F-16 after stocking up on main battle tanks last week, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister said on Friday. A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said it would take its pilots about six months to train on such fighter jets.
When asked if the United States would provide the jets, Biden told reporters at the White House, “No.”
The brief exchange came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had begun to avenge Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion with relentless attacks from the east.
Zelenskiy has warned for weeks that Moscow intends to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the frontline that stretches south and east.
Ukraine got a huge boost last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to supply heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock over the issue.
“The next big hurdle now will be fighter jets,” Yuriy Sak, who advises Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told Reuters on Friday.
Although there are no signs of a new wider Russian offensive, the administrator of the Russian-controlled parts of the Ukrainian province of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, said the Russian troops had gained a foothold in Vuhledar, a mining town whose ruins had been a Ukrainian stronghold. since the start of the war.
Pushilin said Ukrainian forces continued to send reinforcements to Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar, three towns stretching north-south just west of the city of Donetsk. Russian state news agency TASS quoted him as saying that Russian forces were making progress there, but “not clearly, that is, here there is a battle for literally every meter”.
Pushilin adviser Yan Gagin said Russian mercenary Wagner Force fighters had taken partial control of a supply route leading to Bakhmut, a town that had been Moscow’s main target for months.
A day earlier, the Wagner leader said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut.
Kyiv said it repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar, and Reuters could not independently verify situations there. But the reported fighting locations indicated clear, albeit incremental, Russian gains.
Zelenskiy said the Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy losses on the Russian side, making the assaults a reward for Ukraine’s success in repelling Russian forces from the capital, northeast and further south. early in the conflict.
[1/5] U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 140th Colorado Air National Guard Wing during NATO exercise Saber Strike flies over Amari military airbase, Estonia June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
“I think Russia really wants their big revenge. I think they have (already) started it,” Zelenskiy told reporters in the southern port city of Odessa.
Mykola Salamakha, a Ukrainian colonel and military analyst, told Ukrainian NV radio that Moscow’s assault on Vuhledar was very expensive.
“The city is on a plateau and an extremely strong defensive center has been created there,” he said. “It’s a repeat of the situation in Bakhmut – one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by Ukrainian armed forces.”
WESTERN DELAYS
The hundreds of tanks and modern armored vehicles promised to Ukraine by Western countries in recent weeks for a counter-offensive aimed at retaking the territory are months away from being delivered.
That leaves Kyiv fighting all winter in what both sides have described as a meat grinder of relentless attrition.
Moscow’s mercenary Wagner Force sent thousands of convicts recruited from Russian prisons into battle around Bakhmut, buying time for the Russian regular army to reconstitute units with hundreds of thousands of reservists.
Zelenskiy urges the West to speed up delivery of promised weapons so Ukraine can go on the offensive.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Western arms-supplying countries are leading “NATO countries to become more and more directly involved in the conflict – but that has no potential to change. the course of events and will not”.
The US think tank Institute for the Study of War said the “failure of the West to provide the necessary materiel” last year was the main reason Kyiv’s advances had stalled since November.
This allowed Russia to pressure Bakhmut and fortify the front against a future Ukrainian counterattack, its researchers said in a report, although they said Ukraine could still retake the territory once the promised weapons arrived.
Zelenskiy met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Mykolaiv on Monday, a rare visit from a foreign leader close to the front. The town, where Russia’s advance in the south was halted, came under relentless shelling until Ukraine pushed back the front line in November.
Russia’s invasion, which it launched on February 24 last year claiming it was necessary to protect itself from its neighbor’s ties to the West, has killed tens of thousands and driven millions of their homes.
Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Kevin Liffey, Ronald Popeski and offices of Reuters; Written by Peter Graff, Philippa Fletcher and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Gareth Jones, William Maclean and Cynthia Osterman
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