President Joe Biden stressed Monday that the United States will not send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, which the country claims for its defense against Russian invasion.
Asked by the press if the United States will provide kyiv with those fighters, the president limited himself to answering “no.”
The reinforcement of the Air Force with fourth-generation combat aircraft such as the American F16 has become a priority task for the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who on January 26 in his usual night speech stressed that “Russian aggression can and must be stopped with adequate weapons.”
The deputy adviser for National Security of the United States, Jon Finer, had indicated a day later that Washington does not exclude the supply to Ukraine of “any specific weapon system”.
“We will study it very thoroughly,” he told US television channel MSNBC when answering a question about Ukraine’s request for F-16 fighters.
The United States did announce this January that it will send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine and that it will immediately begin training Ukrainian soldiers in their use and maintenance in a third country.
These tanks, which according to Biden are the most effective in the world, will take months to reach Ukraine and will be accompanied by armored recovery vehicles called M88, which will serve to support them.