The negotiations fell apart almost as quickly as they began.
Poland’s announcement on Tuesday that it was ready to provide Ukraine with MiG fighter jets via a US air force base in Germany caught the US by surprise. By Wednesday morning, U.S. and Polish officials were still discussing the prospect of delivering fighter jets to Ukraine, an administration official told CNN.
But on Wednesday afternoon, the Pentagon bluntly said it was opposed to the idea, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a phone call with his Polish counterpart.
“Secretary Austin thanked the Minister for Poland’s willingness to continue to look for ways to help Ukraine, but emphasized that we do not support the transfer of additional fighters to the Ukrainian Air Force at the moment, and therefore have no desire to see them also in custody,” the press officer said at a briefing. Pentagon Secretary John Kirby.
The episode highlights how the US and its allies may be reaching the limits of their ability to help Ukraine while staying out of conflict, and points to possible cracks in an alliance that remained firmly united at the start of the war. war as members imposed heavy sanctions and provided security assistance.
It also demonstrates that the Biden administration is still working on staying on the same page.
The Pentagon’s rejection of the plan to provide the planes comes after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken approved the idea earlier in the week, and a senior GOP lawmaker said there were divisions within the administration over what to do about the issue. Officials tell CNN that all public discussion of the plan makes it less likely because it only increases Moscow’s ability to call any moves an escalation and increases the nervousness of countries like Poland, which are nervous about being under the gun of Russian President Vladimir Putin. .
U.S. officials were deeply disappointed that Poland made the offer public, saying it appeared to be a game for a domestic audience trying to show that they were doing their best to help Ukraine, well aware that the logistics had yet to be worked out.
In Warsaw on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris sought to highlight the strength of the Polish-American alliance, despite this week’s instability.
“I want to be very clear. The United States and Poland are united in what we have done and are ready to help Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, period,” Harris said along with Polish President Andrzej Duda during a joint press conference.
Harris shied away from directly discussing the issue during the press conference and instead highlighted the military support the United States is already providing to Ukraine, with the exception of air power, including anti-tank missiles, stating: “We make deliveries every day in terms of what we can do. “
Asked what else Ukraine can expect, Harris said: “It’s an ongoing process and it’s not going to stop for as long as it needs to.”
Escalation concerns
Kirby’s comments made it clear that there are fears that more direct action could escalate tensions with Russia even further and risk drawing NATO directly into the war.
One administration official said the US was concerned that Russia could interpret flights to Ukraine from a NATO base as an attack.
“The intelligence community has assessed that the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine could be mistaken for an escalation and could lead to a major Russian response that could increase the likelihood of a military escalation with NATO,” Kirby said. “Therefore, we also believe that the transfer of the MiG-29 to Ukraine carries a high risk.”
The U.S. and its allies have taken a number of steps to help Ukraine, including providing weapons and imposing sanctions, such as the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports announced this week by President Joe Biden, another step that Zelenskiy has publicly pushed for. A senior defense official told reporters that most of the $350 million in security aid approved for Ukraine last month had already been sent.
According to a senior US official, the US and other NATO members have so far provided Ukraine with 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
However, they did not introduce a no-fly zone and provide Ukraine with MiG-29 fighters, despite numerous requests from Zelensky for fear of drawing the alliance into the conflict.
A number of lawmakers in Washington have also called for a no-fly zone as both Republicans and Democrats have publicly urged the Biden administration to do more.
“Open the skies, give them planes. These issues are above all our concerns,” Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois and co-chair of the Ukrainian Congress in Congress, told CNN’s Keith Baldwan on Wednesday.
“I can’t stand nit-picking and disagreement when Putin has already said that sanctions are war. We are delivering deadly aid,” he added. “Do we really think that Putin is going to make a distinction between Javelins and Stingers, which are very effective at killing Russians from aircraft protecting the skies overhead?”
Instead of air defense
On Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the UK would supply Ukraine with air defense systems and said it was not seeking a no-fly zone.
“The best way to help protect the skies is with the anti-aircraft weapons that the UK will now supply to Ukraine,” Truss said at a State Department press conference with Blinken.
Kirby said the Pentagon believes the best way to support Ukraine is to provide it with anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, such as surface-to-air missiles and ground-based air defense systems. According to Kirby, the addition of aircraft to the Ukrainian fleet “is unlikely to materially change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force compared to Russian capabilities.”
“Therefore, we believe that the benefit from the transfer of these MiG-29s is small,” said a Pentagon spokesman.
Earlier Wednesday, Blinken, who said on Sunday that the US was working with Polish officials to move planes to Ukraine and “fill” them with US aircraft, said the US was continuing consultations with Poland and other NATO allies on how to provide fighter jets to Ukraine.
“I think what we see is that the Polish proposal shows that there are some complexities associated with the provision of security systems. We have to make sure we’re doing it right,” Blinken said.
There are also several other countries with planes, including Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, and officials do not rule out talks with these countries as they look for a way forward. One official said that Ukraine’s initial request was to Poland as well as those three countries, but Poland was the only country initially willing to consider a possible transfer of the aircraft.
Officials describe the problem as twofold: the logistical problem of getting planes to Ukraine and the political problem of preventing an escalation with Russia. US officials described the Polish plan as failing to adequately address both problems.
Disappointment among Polish and US officials
Polish officials, for their part, said they believe they have been unfairly accused of delaying the dispatch of fighter jets to Ukraine, sources told CNN.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Polish officials told their American counterparts that they were ready to provide Ukraine with their MiG-29 fighter jets. But, given the possibility of increased aggression from Russia, the Poles told the United States that they would need to replace the aircraft. The US has said none will be available until 2024, given that a number of countries, including Taiwan, are ahead of Poland in the queue for American-made fighters. Therefore, Poland felt that it should shelve this idea.
But public pressure on the Biden administration to send the planes intensified significantly after Zelenskiy pleaded with US lawmakers to facilitate the transfer during a Zoom call on Saturday morning.
Prior to the call, U.S. officials downplayed the prospect of helping with the transfer of MiG aircraft trained to fly Ukrainian pilots. Officials said they were mainly focused on other areas of security assistance, including sending anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. The logistical problems of getting the planes to Ukraine seemed like an impossible task to some officials, who doubted how effective the planes would be.
But Zelenskiy’s phone request, which lawmakers called passionate, seems to have changed the tide. Immediately after the end of the session, both Republicans and Democrats came out in support, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
However, a Senate aide argued that the Biden administration was ahead of Congress in considering the idea of transferring the planes. While Zelenskiy’s presentation was compelling and there was broad interest in exploring options, there was no concerted effort to get the Biden administration to support the transfer, the aide said.
But US officials said public support left the administration no choice but to publicly support the idea, even if some officials were skeptical. Then the US began to state publicly that only Poland should make the decision. Blinken told CBS on Sunday that the US had given Poland a “green light” to send the planes, despite Poland stressing to the US that they would not be able to do so without a proper replacement.
The comments deeply disappointed Polish officials, and after days of feeling unfairly blamed for the delay, Poland’s foreign ministry made a surprise announcement Tuesday evening that it was ready to transfer planes to the US via Ramstein Air Base. in Germany, so that the United States would then be sent directly to Ukraine. The US immediately rejected this idea.
Divisions within the administration
Texas Representative Mike McCall, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN Wednesday after a secret briefing on Ukraine that there appeared to be internal divisions within the Biden administration between Pentagon and state officials over how to respond to Poland’s proposal. .
“(The) secretary of defense had doubts about this and the triggering of … Article 5,” McCall said. Asked if Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had split, McCall replied, “Yes.”
“I suggested to the secretary that we do this when we were in Poland and he agreed,” McCall said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday there was a “serious logistical problem,” while noting that talks between Defense Department officials and their Ukrainian counterparts were ongoing.
An administration official said bilateral relations between the two countries remain strong and that additional U.S. security assistance continues to flow to Ukraine via Poland, including on the final day.
A senior defense ministry official said on Wednesday that “most” of Ukraine’s air force is still “intact and operational.” Ukrainians have planes at their disposal, the official said, noting that airspace over Ukraine remains “contested.”
“The airspace is contested,” the official said. “And, as I said yesterday, the Russians have umbrellas against surface-to-air missiles that practically cover the entire country.”
Ellie Kaufman of CNN, Barbara Starr, Oren Liebermann and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.