Poland wants to deliver F-16s together with its allies. Ukraine is already preparing runways for the Western jet.
The desperate request from Kiev has been repeated since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. "Close our skies," the people of Ukraine demanded again and again. But NATO's no-fly zone – as it did over Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s war there – has been categorically ruled out by US-led supporters of Ukraine.
Such a mission meant the entry into the war of the Western Alliance. And that should be avoided at all costs. Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rephrased the call to "close the skies" in his speech before both houses of the British Parliament in London to: "Give us wings", thus asking for fighter jets to provide Ukrainian pilots with airspace over Ukraine.
The US funds pilot training
In July 2022, the US House of Representatives approved $100 million to fund the training of Ukrainian pilots on the US-made F-16 fighter jet. Poland supplied the Ukrainian Air Force with old Soviet MiG-29 fighter jets shortly after the start of the Russian invasion. According to sources in Warsaw, they served as a "spare parts store".
But they did not rule out the delivery of other MiG fighter jets, which are known to Ukrainian pilots. Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, told DW that even they will not be of much help to his country after a year of war: "Today, Soviet planes will not be able to change the course of the war." They would not help against the air superiority of the Russian attackers, Ignat said, adding that "we must switch to Western planes", otherwise Ukraine will remain "technologically inferior" to Russia.
Ukrainian pilots in their old Soviet planes with antiquated radar would not even notice that a missile was fired at them, says a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force.
Most importantly, Russian warplanes are now firing their missiles at Ukraine's infrastructure and civilians from a safe distance. This is due to the Western military equipment that Ukraine has received in the past eleven months: anti-aircraft tanks such as the Chepard supplied by Germany are apparently successfully keeping the Russian machines at bay.
"Russia has adapted to the ranges available to Ukraine," Niko Lange of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) told DW. The expert for Ukraine points to the so-called land bridge to the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Kremlin forces maintain an important command, control and logistics infrastructure in the south, where a relatively small strip is occupied by Russia, beyond the range of Ukrainian missiles.
To have any chance of recapturing occupied territory, Lange says, Ukrainian forces need weapons with "longer range to prepare the battlefield for an attack to liberate that area." The former commander of the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, emphasized this in an interview with DW about the Ukrainian armed forces: "The sooner we put them in a position to achieve a decisive result, the sooner (the war, ed.) could end."
Hodges called for the prompt delivery of fighter jets and long-range missiles to Ukraine. The calculation behind this: so the Ukrainian armed forces could first attack the supply lines between the front and the Ukrainian coast on the Sea of Azov and - after a successful recapture here - then the bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea. The peninsula would then be cut off from Russian supplies.
Poland seeks a decision at the Munich Security Conference
But the Polish government is pushing for a decision on the delivery of Western fighter jets to be made at the Munich Security Conference. At the beginning of February, the ambassador of Warsaw in Berlin called for this in an interview with the German news group "Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland". Poland and the Netherlands have not ruled out the delivery of the NATO F-16 fighter jet for weeks.
But other Western planes are also being discussed again and again among analysts. These include the Swedish arms manufacturer Saab's Gripen fighter jet (Saab 39 Gripen), which has been in production since the mid-1990s. The Gripen "would suit our climate," Yuriy Ignat of the Ukrainian Air Force told DW. But, "the transition to Gripen could take decades".
French President Emmanuel Macron has not ruled out the delivery of a similar new French Rafale (Dassault Rafale) aircraft in January. This machine is "one of the most expensive planes in the world," says Ignat and asks: "How many of these could be delivered, who will pay for it?"
Road preparation for F-16
Ignat says he is confident his pilots will be flying a Western warplane in Ukraine in six months. Because preparations on the ground are already underway. Accordingly, Ukrainian construction workers are already leveling new runways at various airports and preparing easy roads for the F-16 fighter jet.
Unlike the old MiG-29, the Western jet could be damaged on old Soviet-era concrete runways.
Bonus video:
