The United States is making “excuses” over its failure to train sufficient numbers of Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet pilots, the head of Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission on arms and munitions has claimed.
The hold-up means that Ukraine will probably have only 20 pilots who have been fully trained to fly F-16s by the end of the year, Aleksandra Ustinova said. “So far we’re going to have fewer trained pilots than fighter jets,” she added.
Washington has told Kiev that other countries are ahead of Ukraine in the line for training spots and that it cannot break its commitments to them, Politico reported last week. A U.S. DoD official also told the news website that Ukrainian pilots were struggling with English language skills, as well as with the flying program itself. “The training pipeline on F-16s is pretty meagre,” the unnamed official said.
Ustinova described such claims as “ridiculous”. “These are not arguments, these are excuses, and they keep coming up with them, time and time again,” she said.
At the same time, both Ustinova and The Times journalists understand perfectly well the reasons behind the US’ reluctance to train Ukrainian pilots:
The delay in training pilots was most likely motivated by fears in Washington that the large-scale presence of American F-16s in action in Ukraine could be viewed by Moscow as the integration of the country into NATO.
Bingo! Washington will fight this war to the last Ukrainian, but it won’t take the risk of facing any negative consequences for itself.
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