NATO allies announced Wednesday they had started the long-promised transfer of F-16 jets to Ukraine as leaders meet for a summit in Washington clouded by political uncertainties in the United States.
With the pomp of the three-day gathering in the US capital, President Joe Biden is aiming to rally the West and also reassure US voters amid pre-election scrutiny on whether at 81 -- six years older than the alliance -- he remains fit for the job.
Biden individually welcomed the other 31 leaders of the alliance before urging them to keep pace with Russia's military production which has stepped up sharply in the two years since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
"We can -- and will -- defend every inch of NATO territory and we'll do it together," Biden told the North Atlantic Council, the formal decision-making body of the alliance, convened in an air-conditioned convention center as Washington sweltered in a heat wave.
Biden announced that Denmark and the Netherlands had begun sending US-made F-16 jets to Ukraine -- making good on a key promise last year to Kyiv, which has struggled to gain parity in the air with Russia.
Biden earlier announced new air defense systems for Ukraine and said the United States had agreed to place long-range missiles periodically in Germany.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the F-16 transfer "concentrates Vladimir Putin's mind on the fact that he will not outlast Ukraine, he will not outlast us and, if he persists, the damage that will continue to be done to Russia and its interests will only deepen."
"The quickest way to get to peace is through a strong Ukraine," Blinken said.
But Donald Trump, who is edging out Biden in recent polls, has mused about bringing a quick peace settlement by forcing Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia.
The Republican mogul has repeatedly questioned the utility of NATO -- formed in 1949 as collective defense against Moscow -- which he sees as an unfair burden on the United States.
'Terror must fail'
On the eve of the summit, Russia fired a barrage of missiles on Ukraine, killing dozens, including in Kyiv where a children's hospital was reduced to debris.
Biden invited to the summit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who voiced gratitude for the F-16s.
The new aircraft will "bring just and lasting peace closer, demonstrating that terror must fail," Zelensky wrote on social media.
The summit will look for ways to "Trump-proof" the alliance including by having NATO itself take over coordination of arms delivery from the United States.
Outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has also secured a pledge to keep supplying arms at the same rate -- some 40 billion euros ($43 billion) annually -- that NATO members have been since Russia invaded.
"I expect that regardless of the outcome of the US elections, the US will remain a strong and staunch NATO ally," Stoltenberg said as leaders gathered for the summit.
Biden has also invited four key Pacific partners -- Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- as he seeks to increase NATO's role in managing a rising China.
'Irreversible' Ukraine path to NATO
Ukraine wants firm assurances that it will one day join NATO, which considers an attack on any member an attack on all.
Several diplomats said negotiations had settled on wording of a statement that will voice support for Ukraine's "irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership."
Kyiv's membership enjoys wide backing from Baltic and Eastern European nations still haunted by decades under the Soviet yoke.
But Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have led opposition, concerned that the alliance would effectively be entering war with nuclear-armed Russia as it occupies swathes of Ukraine.
President Alexander Stubb of Finland -- which, like Sweden, joined NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- hailed the language as a message to Putin that he is failing in his goal of pushing back the alliance.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, visiting days after his Labour Party swept to power, promised Zelensky that Britain -- unlike the United States -- was united across partisan lines on supporting Ukraine.
The summit, Starmer told reporters, will show Putin that NATO is "bigger now than it's ever been, more united than it's ever been, and absolutely clear-eyed about the threat of Russian aggression."
© 2024 AFP
16 Comments
TaiwanIsNotChina
Will be another great success for Russia when their supposedly high tech jets fail to take out F-16s.
JJE
Few things here:
F-16s won't change the calculus on the battlefield. Russia will win this conflict hands down. There won't be a "strategic defeat" inflicted on Moscow.
The gaslighting about the now "irreversible path" to NATO membership continues, which is not only reversible; it never was in the forward direction to it begin with, let alone on a 'path'.
The truth is Ukraine has been sent up a long brown creek without a paddle in its role for and by the west as a usable proxy, which it has played to a tee, and in the future to be discarded.
Moscow gets a veto by default and it won't happen. Kyiv-regime forces have to push the RFAF back to 1991 borders and if one subscribes to that fantasy, then you've been drinking too much lemonade.
That main photo looks kind of creepy with Joe on the two big screens.
geronimo2006
More than 2 years on and Russia, for lack of equipment, is reduced to carrying out meat-wave attacks incurring huge casualities. They can't defeat Ukraine. They would have done so by now and it's not for lack of trying. The strategic defeat will happen when their army or economy collapses.
Antiquesaving
The coping never stops.
The SU-35 is a 5th generation and in the rare likelihood of and encounter the F-16 has little chance especially with the pilots having less experience.
The S-400 system it far more advanced than even these upgraded F-16 are capable of dealing with.
Longer radar, longer rage than the F-16.
Ukraine in theory will have 65 F-16s Russia has around 200 SU-35 and SU -34, and that was before.
Today the estimate of new SU-35 is around 30 a year since 2022, so add in another 60 minimum (based on pentagon reports).
Russia has been hitting Ukrainian airfields, any idea why?
Well because the F-16 needed special airfields that Ukraine didn't have and those had to be built, and Russia waited until completion to blow them to bits.
Abrahams tank "game changer" 35 delivered 10 already confirmed destroyed and Ukraine lost more land, same with challenger tanks, etc...
Now the great F-16 game changer!
65 F-16s are not going to make much difference.
Ukraine is losing because it's men are refusing to fight.
New laws to conscript even sick people, lower the age of conscription, military gangs grabbing people off the streets, 28 days training and sent to the front, a 2 day average at the front before a conscript is killed or wounded.
Ukraine itself admits it doesn't has enough men and cannot get men even with conscription and press gangs on the streets.
More weapons for how? Where are the soldiers going to come from.
We hear, Ukrainians are willing to fight, if this was true then they wouldn't have to lower the conscription age and wouldn't need men guarding the border and running around the streets trying to grab draft Dodgers.
Few are volunteering so they have to force people. Is this a country where the men are rushing to defend it?
Ramsey's Kitchen
Will be another great success for Russia when their supposedly high tech jets fail to take out F-16s.
Will this age as well as the expert predictions of superior Leopards and Abrams invincibility against those Russkie shovels? Likely.
fallaffel
You don't think Ukraine can lay some fresh concrete over a damaged runway?
Sounds like a wasted missile.
JJE
They probably can lay some fresh concrete over a damaged runway.
Question is what concrete as it was sold off on the side and any funds are/were embezzled.
Sh1mon M4sada
There's no impediment any more, go for it. Keeping Ukraine out of NATO was to avoid war, but war is underway, so rationale gone.
fallaffel
They are fighting, and have been for a couple years now. Doesn't that mean they're willing to fight?
>
Fos
All this pro-US propaganda of the media and hypocrisy over an alleged greater good for the fight to support Ukraine and the good deeds of of Japan's ally: Washington. The Usa administration is trying so hard to create enemies (i.e. China and Russia) for their own commercial and economic interests, while pushing the rest of the world population to ignore the forgotten war in Gaza, where they are making billion of dollars selling America made weapons, and killing innocent civilians. What a world we leave in! Thank you guys for your arguments amongst this double standards driven by God know who?
JJE
How exactly is Kyiv going to join NATO with 25% of the country gone and counting?
Blacklabel
This is the 3rd Zelensky-Biden meeting in like 6 weeks?
And now at the NATO meeting and he’s not even a member.
somebody is a priority customer. Some day after Joe is gone we will find out why,
Ramsey's Kitchen
Game changers.
*Superior High-tech Western weapons called ‘useless’ in Ukraine conflict according to Wall Street Journal.*
"Satellite-guided shells are particularly vulnerable to Russian jamming technology, commanders in Kiev have told the newspaper. Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities have rendered precision-guided Western munitions “useless” in the Ukraine conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. With their guidance systems scrambled, some of these weapons have reportedly been retired within weeks of hitting the battlefield."
Raw Beer
NATO sure likes throwing money away!
WoodyLee
"The quickest way to get to peace is through a strong Ukraine," Blinken said."
As Pres. Reagan once said,
""We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.""
The problem here Ukraine alone can't win this war, and NATO nations are not ready to put boots on the ground!!!? or are they?
wallace
Bogeyman in someone's cupboard.