Today’s Morning Jolt is all about the Biden administration’s muddy and contradictory positions on military assistance to Ukraine, particularly the refusal to provide Ukraine with the F-16 fighter jets that it has been asking for since March 2022. After today’s Jolt was published, CNN and other media sources reported that a senior administration official said the U.S. will support a joint effort with allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, including F-16s.
So Biden’s position is that we will train the Ukrainians on the type of advanced fighter jet that Biden insists they don’t need. We will train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, but somehow it would be escalatory or provocative to have Ukrainian pilots actually flying F-16s.