WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Biden says no F-16s for Ukraine as Russia claims gains

The United States will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia, President Joe Biden said on Monday, as Russian forces claimed a series of incremental gains in the country's east.

Ukraine planned to push for Western fourth-generation fighter jets such as the F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks last week, an adviser to Ukraine's defence minister said on Friday. A Ukrainian air force spokesman said it would take its pilots about half a year to train on such fighter jets.

Asked if the United States would provide the jets, Biden told reporters at the White House, "No."

The brief exchange came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had begun exacting its revenge for Ukraine's resistance to its invasion with relentless attacks in the east.

Zelenskiy has warned for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.

Ukraine won a huge boost last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to provide heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue.

"The next big hurdle will now be the fighter jets," Yuriy Sak, who advises Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told Reuters on Friday.

While there was no sign of a broader new Russian offensive, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal-mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.

Pushilin said Ukrainian forces were continuing to throw reinforcements at Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar, three towns running from north to south just west of Donetsk city. The Russian state news agency TASS quoted him as saying Russian forces were making advances there, but "not clear-cut, that is, here there is a battle for literally every meter."

Pushilin's adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been Moscow's main focus for months.

A day earlier, the head of Wagner said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut.

Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar, and Reuters could not independently verify the situations there. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains.

Zelenskiy said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side, casting the assaults as payback for Ukraine's success in pushing Russian forces back from the capital, northeast and south earlier in the conflict.

"I think that Russia really wants its big revenge. I think they have (already) started it," Zelenskiy told reporters in the southern port city of Odesa.

Mykola Salamakha, a Ukrainian colonel and military analyst, told Ukrainian Radio NV that Moscow's assault in Vuhledar was coming at huge cost.

"The town is on an upland and an extremely strong defensive hub has been created there," he said. "This is a repetition of the situation in Bakhmut - one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces."

WESTERN DELAYS

The hundreds of modern tanks and armoured vehicles pledged to Ukraine by Western countries in recent weeks for a counteroffensive to recapture territory are months away from delivery.

This leaves Kyiv to fight through the winter in what both sides have described as a meat grinder of relentless attritional warfare.

Moscow's Wagner mercenary force has sent thousands of convicts recruited from Russian prisons into battle around Bakhmut, buying time for Russia's regular military to reconstitute units with hundreds of thousands of reservists.

Zelenskiy is urging the West to hasten delivery of its promised weapons so Ukraine can go on the offensive.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Western countries supplying arms leads "to NATO countries more and more becoming directly involved in the conflict - but it doesn't have the potential to change the course of events and will not do so."

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War think-tank said "the West's failure to provide the necessary materiel" last year was the main reason Kyiv's advances had halted since November.

That allowed Russia to apply pressure at Bakhmut and fortify the front against a future Ukrainian counter-attack, its researchers said in a report, though they said Ukraine could still recapture territory once the promised weapons arrive.

Zelenskiy met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Monday in Mykolaiv, a rare visit by a foreign leader close to the front. The city, where Russia's advance in the south was halted, had been under relentless bombardment until Ukraine pushed the front line back in November.

Russia's invasion, which it launched on Feb. 24 last year claiming it was necessary to protect itself from its neighbour's ties with the West, has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

** Croatia's president criticizes tank deliveries to Ukraine

NATO-member Croatia’s president on Monday criticized Western nations for supplying Ukraine with heavy tanks and other weapons in its campaign against invading Russian forces, saying those arms deliveries will only prolong the war.

Zoran Milanovic told reporters in the Croatian capital that it’s “mad” to believe that Russia can be defeated in a conventional war.

“I am against sending any lethal arms there,” Milanovic said. “It prolongs the war.”

“What is the goal? Disintegration of Russia, change of the government? There is also talk of tearing Russia apart. This is mad,” he added.

Milanovic won the presidential election in Croatia in 2019 as a left-leaning liberal candidate, a counterpoint to the conservative government currently in power in the European Union and NATO-member state. But he has since made a turn to populist nationalism and criticized Western policies toward Russia as well as the Balkans.

Milanovic has built a reputation of being pro-Russian, which he has repeatedly denied. Yet in recent months, he has openly opposed the admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO as well as the training of Ukrainian troops in Croatia as part of EU aid to the embattled country.

On Monday, the Croatian president expanded his narrative by saying he believes that Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, will never again be part of Ukraine.

After months of hesitation, the U.S. said it will send 31 of its 70-ton Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, and Germany announced it will dispatch 14 Leopard 2 tanks and allow other countries to do the same.

Milanovic said that “from 2014 to 2022, we are watching how someone provokes Russia with the intention of starting this war.”

“What is the goal of this war? A war against a nuclear power that is at war in another country? Is there a conventional way to defeat such a country?” Milanovic asked on Monday. “Who pays the price? Europe. America pays the least,” he said.

“A year has passed and we are only now talking about tanks," Milanovic said. “Not a single American tank will go to Ukraine in a year. Only German tanks will be sent there.”

Although the presidential post is mostly ceremonial in Croatia, Milanovic is formally the supreme commander of the armed forces. His latest anti-Western outbursts have embarrassed and irritated the country's government which has fully supported Ukraine in its fight against Russia's aggression.

On Monday, Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic reacted to the president’s positions by saying they “directly harm Croatia’s foreign policy position.”

“The summary of that narrative is: let’s sit down as soon as possible, let the Russians take away I don’t know how many thousands of square kilometers of Ukraine and forget about the expansion of NATO,” Plenkovic said.

** Boris Johnson says Putin said he could hit him with missile

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that President Vladimir Putin didn’t seem serious about avoiding war in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine — and at one point told the British leader it would be easy to kill him with a missile.

The Kremlin denied Putin made any such threat.

In a documentary released Monday, Johnson says he called Putin in February 2022 and tried to dissuade him from war, telling him Ukraine would not be joining NATO in the foreseeable future – a longstanding concern of the Russian leader – and warning invasion would bring “massive” Western sanctions.

“From the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate,” Johnson says in the BBC series “Putin vs the West.”

Johnson says that Putin “threatened me at one point and said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute’, or something like that.”

The three-part series produced by veteran documentary-maker Norma Percy recounts how Western leaders dealt with Russia’s president in the years leading up to the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion.

Percy said Monday that she did not think Putin was making a direct threat but “it was a reminder that he could do it, and (Johnson) should remember that when he is dealing with him.”

Asked about Johnson’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that his account was untrue, “or, more precisely, it was a lie.” Peskov said Johnson may have deliberately lied or failed to understand what Putin was telling him.

“There were no threats with missiles,” Peskov said on a conference call with reporters. "While talking about security challenges to Russia, President Putin said that if Ukraine joins NATO the potential deployment of U.S. or other NATO missiles near our borders would mean that any such missile could reach Moscow in minutes.”

Johnson was one of the most prominent international allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until he was forced out of office in mid-2022 by ethics scandals. Britain remains a major supplier of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Russian governor puts bounty on Western tanks

The governor of Zabaikalsky Region in eastern Russia has offered soldiers from the province a chance to earn bounties on NATO tanks that are captured or destroyed in Ukraine. The governor’s announcement came as a private company offered a similar reward for captured Western-made armor.

In an order signed on Friday, Governor Alexander Osipov declared that any local soldier who managed to seize a Leopard tank “in working condition” could earn 3 million rubles ($42,909). A bounty of one million rubles ($14,303) will be paid to anyone who destroys one of these German tanks, while those assisting with a successful capture will be paid $7,150 and those assisting in the destruction of a Leopard will earn $2,240.

A sum of 1.5 million rubles ($21,450) will be paid for the successful capture of an American M1 Abrams tank, with destruction paying 500,000 rubles ($7,150). As with the Leopards, smaller bounties are offered to assisting soldiers.

Osipov’s order ended with a warning that soldiers seeking out tanks to destroy or capture should first and foremost work to “preserve their life and health.”

Berlin announced last week that it would supply Kiev’s forces with 14 Leopard 2s, and would give other European countries permission to export their own stocks of these tanks to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Germany and its partners were looking to supply 112 tanks in total. 

The US pledged 31 Abrams tanks but – having apparently promised to give Germany “cover” to send the Leopards – reportedly won’t be able to deliver these high-maintenance behemoths to the battlefield until at least the end of 2023.

Russian chemical firm Fores has offered a similar bounty to Osipov’s. In a statement on its website on Friday, the company said that it would pay 5 million rubles ($70,700) to any Russian serviceman who destroyed or captured either kind of tank, with 500,000 rubles ($7,070) offered for subsequent trophies.

Moscow’s position is that foreign weapons deliveries show NATO’s “direct involvement” and will only prolong the conflict in Ukraine. Western tanks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month, “can burn and they will burn like the rest [of the Western weapons].”

** Moscow provides more evidence of US biolabs in Ukraine

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Monday laid out more evidence that US-funded laboratories were working in Ukraine. Documents and materials recovered by Russian troops showed that Western pharmaceutical companies operating in territory under Kiev’s control conducted HIV/AIDS research on Ukrainian military personnel.

The commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, presented Ukrainian-language documents referring to HIV infection studies that began in 2019. The list of targeted groups shows service members alongside prisoners, drug addicts and other “patients at high risk of infection.”

According to Kirillov, the Russian military has recovered more than 20,000 documents and other materials related to the biological programs in Ukraine, while interviewing eyewitnesses and participants. The evidence “confirms the focus of the Pentagon on creating biological weapons components and testing them on the population of Ukraine and other states along [Russia’s] borders,” the general told reporters.

Based on documents originating with the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Russian military identified eight more individuals involved in the US-funded research in Ukraine. Among the names Kirillov singled out was Karen Saylors of Labyrinth Global Health, previously of Metabiota, a company linked to US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. 

The latest trove of documents, belonging to the company Pharmbiotest, was unearthed in Lisichansk in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) early in January, Kirillov noted. 

“Clinical samples and patient records with their personal data were buried, and not cremated or destroyed in a proper fashion. This suggests that the destruction of this evidence was carried out in extreme haste,” the lieutenant general said. 

In October 2022, Russia filed an official complaint over alleged US-backed biological activities in Ukraine and requested a UN probe into the matter. The UN Security Council rejected Moscow’s proposal after the US, UK, and France voted against it. The US opposition “once again confirms that Washington has something to hide, and that ensuring the transparency of biological research is contrary to US interests,” Kirillov said. 

As evidence of the widespread threat posed by the Pentagon’s biological research conducted beyond America’s borders, Kirillov referred to the previously mentioned US involvement in coronavirus studies, including by funding the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance that contracted with the laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Kirillov also brought up the 1977 outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in Egypt, near a biological laboratory run by the US Navy. The disease previously known only south of the Sahara made a surprise appearance in Cairo a few months after the lab employees were vaccinated against it, the general said. Moreover, the Cairo strain was “highly pathogenic” compared to the disease’s normal flu-like symptoms, suggesting the involvement of gain-of-function experiments.

AP/Reuters/RT