The West is questioning Ukraine’s rush to battle without adequate training citing the loss of the F-16 to Russian fire
UK to provide 650 air defence missiles by Christmas
Ukraine’s loss of an F-16 fighter jet weeks after a handful of the aircraft arrived in the country is making Western officials wonder if the decision to accelerate pilot training was correct, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The jet was destroyed last week during a Russian drone and missile barrage, killing one of Ukraine’s most experienced pilots, Aleksey Mes. Ukrainian investigators have yet to reveal the cause.
Kiev lobbied Western donors to provide dozens of F-16s to bolster its dwindling Soviet-era air fleet. A small cadre of pilots was selected to undergo training courses in Denmark, the US, and Romania, though Kiev is months away from having enough men to deploy a full squadron.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky looks at a pair of F-16 fighter jets during a presentation early August 2024. © Ukrainian Presidency / Handout via Getty Images
The training focused on the types of missions Ukraine intends to give to F-16s, primarily interception of Russian cruise missiles, the WSJ said. There are no plans to adjust the program, but “the crash shows what happens when you try to rush things,” a senior Western defense official told the newspaper.
Before being given combat missions pilots normally train with their units for months, but the Ukrainian airmen engaged in the conflict right away. The rationale was that their pilots experienced with Soviet jets would have an edge over rookies.
There have been claims in Ukraine that the F-16 was shot down by a Patriot missile system, another weapon provided by the country’s Western donors. The commander of the Air Force was fired days after the incident.
A display model of the LMM at the Thales UK plant, Belfast. © Getty Images / Niall Carson/PA Images
A source told the WSJ that the aircraft disappeared from radar shortly after a Russian missile exploded near it, possibly damaging the F-16.
Kiev has been rushing military personnel to the front line in order to make up for heavy battlefield losses, General Aleksandr Syrsky, the top commander of the armed forces, admitted in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“Of course, everyone wants the level of training to be the best,” he told Christiane Amanpour. “At the same time, the dynamics of the front requires us to constantly put conscripted servicemen as soon as possible.”
London will supply Kiev with £162 million ($213 million) worth of Martlet multirole missiles, with the first shipment set to arrive by the end of the year, the UK Defense Ministry said in a press release on Friday.
This comes after two weeks of Russian strikes on the Ukrainian military industrial and energy sector, as Russia advances in Donbass.
A Ukrainian soldier manning an M109 artillery gun. © Diego Herrera Carcedo / Anadolu via Getty Images
The announcement also comes after a bilateral meeting between UK Defense Secretary John Healey and his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, earlier this week, the press statement said. The UK will begin to deliver £300 million worth of artillery ammunition, as well as 650 Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) systems, with the first shipments expected by the end of 2024, according to the press release.
The UK, which is among Ukraine’s biggest war sponsors, has provided Kiev with more than €8.92 billion in military aid since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, according to Germany’s Kiel institute.
Last month, however, Zelensky criticized the UK for its “slowed down” pace in providing weaponry. “We will insist on the need for bold steps, bold decisions,” he said in an address.
The delivery of LMM missiles is meant to boost Kiev’s air defenses against attacks like this week’s Russian strike on Poltava, Healey said.
Moscow struck “the 179th Joint Training Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” with two Iskander ballistic missiles in the deadliest attack this year, the Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday. Foreign instructors were preparing Ukrainian communications and electronic warfare specialists, as well as drone operators at the facility, the ministry added. According to Ukrainian officials, the strike killed at least 55 and wounded 328 more.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, stressed that the Russian Army only strikes military targets, while Ukraine uses cluster munitions against civilians. Russia is getting better at hitting foreign military instructors and mercenaries in Ukraine, he said, adding that “the direct involvement of foreign states in the conflict is evident.”
Moscow has warned that deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine, as well as the training of Ukrainian troops by foreign military instructors, makes Kiev’s sponsors direct participants in the conflict. The supplies of weapons, however, will not alter the course of the conflict, but only result in more deaths, Russia has said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, said on Thursday that Moscow’s forces have been making rapid advances in the region, partly due to Kiev’s decision to pull out some of its best units to attack Russia’s Kursk Region. The Russian Defense Ministry estimated Ukraine’s losses in the area at more than 10,000 troops since the start of the incursion.
Source X/RT/CNN/WSJ