“Ukraine does not need F-16 fighter jets.”
U.S. President, Joe Biden, said Friday that Ukraine does not need F-16 fighter jets “for now”.thus rejecting the request of his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski, on the day marking the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Despite the repeated requests for Zelenski the United States and other allies to supply fighters for Ukrainian troops to defend Ukrainian airspace against the expected Russian spring offensive, Biden has rejected the requestHe said in an interview with ABC News.
“No, now you don’t need F-16 (…) There is no basis on which there is a reason, according to our Army now, to provide F-16s,” the U.S. president said when asked if Ukraine needs fighter jets, without closing the door, however, to the U.S. supplying them in the future.
“There is no basis on which there is a reason, according to our Army now, to provide F-16s.”
Previously, Biden has confessed that he had a meeting in Kiev with Zelenski in which the two presidents discussed the dispatch of these fighter jets, although he declined to give further details, saying it was a “private” discussion, the White House said in a statement.
No evidence of China supplying lethal weapons to Russia.
In this regard, the U.S. president has reported that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the consequences of sending lethal weapons to Russia.
“I had a long conservation with Xi about this in the summer. I told him: ‘Look, this is not a threat, it’s just a statement.’. When, in fact, the Europeans saw what was happening and the Americans saw what was happening in Russia, in Europe, guess what? Six hundred companies pulled out and left,” Biden told reporters.
“I said, ‘You assured me that China’s future depends on investment from the Western world. That matters,'” the U.S. leader reiterated, ruling out that for the moment there is any evidence to prove that Peking has supplied lethal weapons to Moscow..
