UK will not send fighter jets to Ukraine if there is risk to British safety, government says
The UK has an eye on “potential escalatory risks” as it considers sending warplanes to Ukraine, Downing Street has told PA news.
When asked about some western allies’ concerns that supplying jets could risk dragging Nato into the conflict, the prime minister’s spokesperson said:
Firstly we haven’t made a decision in terms of UK provision of jets, we are training currently. The UK is in the process of providing Challenger tanks and we have provided longer-range capabilities as well. We take these decisions carefully and we do it thoughtfully. We are aware of potential escalatory risks.
The spokesperson added:
But throughout we have been confident the approach we are taking is the best and quickest way to help Ukraine end this war, which is obviously in everyone’s interests. And it is Russia that continues to take escalatory action with their bombardment of civilians and continue their illegal war in Ukraine.
No 10 told PA news the government would not send fighter jets to Ukraine if it put the UK’s safety at risk.
“The UK has significant numbers of Typhoons and F-35s,” Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said. “Of course we would never do anything that would put UK safety at risk.”
He added that the UK would be working with international partners to “work out how we could supply (Ukraine) with Nato-standard capabilities”.
Sending Typhoons would require permission from Italy, Spain and Germany, while F-35s would need US agreement, the official said.
Key events
The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has appeared to suggest that Ukrainian air force pilots would only complete their training in the UK “probably post-conflict”.
Ben Wallace, speaking at a joint UK-Italy ministerial press conference in Rome, said: “Britain’s position on some capability (on fighter planes) is nothing to do with trying to cause problems or challenges.
“It is fundamentally that some of our equipment is solely sovereign. Challenger tanks — I don’t have to ask permission of another country to send them, I can just make a decision in collaboration with my Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister.
“They are British sovereignty, so it just quicker rather than… if you were to talk about Typhoon fighter jets, there are four nations in that. But also Britain hasn’t said it is necessarily going to send fighter jets to Ukraine.
“What it has said is we’re going to start training to improve the resilience of Ukraine, probably post-conflict, which is no different from what we were doing in 2015 where Britain, Sweden, Canada, America were training the Ukrainians to form their defence.
“That’s not new. All of us on this platform know that over the last year, we shouldn’t rule anything in and we shouldn’t rule anything out.”
Ukraine is making “impressive” progress on the path to European integration, a process for which there is “no rigid timeline”, the European Commission p,resident Ursula von der Leyen, said on Thursday, Reuters reports.
She said:
The Commission is working very closely with the Ukrainian government (…) There is no rigid timeline, it is a merit-based process.
Moscow would increase production of tanks in response to western arms supplies to Ukraine, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said during a visit to a tank factory on Thursday according to Reuters.
“As we know, our adversary [Ukraine] has been begging abroad for planes, missiles, tanks. How should we respond? It is clear that in this case, it is natural for us to increase production of various armaments including modern tanks,” he said.
Sean Ingle
‘Wrong side of history’: Ukraine athletes accuse IOC of ‘kowtowing’ to Russia
Ukraine’s athletes have accused the International Olympic Committee of rewarding Vladimir Putin’s aggression and being “on the wrong side of history” in an escalating war of words over whether Russians should compete at the Paris 2024 Games. The IOC recently moved away from having an outright ban on athletes from Russia and Belarus and is investigating ways they can qualify for the Olympics under a neutral flag.
In a letter to Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee, sent last week, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, criticised Ukraine’s threat to boycott the Games, saying it would violate the Olympic charter. That stance has angered Ukraine’s athletes, who have hit back by suggesting the IOC is “kowtowing” to Russia.
Read more here:
New European sanctions against Russia will include new export bans worth more than €10bn ($10.7bn) and will take Vladimir Putin’s propagandists, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told reporters on Thursday.
During a joint press conference with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, she said, according to Reuters:
We will target Putin’s propagandists because their lies are poisoning the public space in Russia and abroad.
The new sanctions “will further starve Russia’s military machine and shake the foundations of its economy”, she added.
The European Union must continue to provide maximum support to Ukraine, the European Council president, Charles Michel, told reporters on Thursday.
During a joint press conference with Zelenskiy and European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Michel said:
We understand that the coming weeks and months will be of decisive importance. We must remain open-eyed, we must continue to provide maximum level support…Artillery, munitions, defence systems (…) you have told us exactly what you need and what you need now,” Michel added, looking at the Ukrainian president next to him.
Simon Jenkins
Zelenskiy wants jets. The west should think very carefully before giving them to him
Heroic rhetoric has its moment in every conflict. “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it,” cried Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in pleading support from the nations of Europe in Westminster Hall on Wednesday. He faces a renewed battle to drive Russian tanks off his land – all his land – in the spring. His cause is just and it is desperate. He now wants jets.
At such a time, war has all the best tunes. It ridicules argument, honours danger and jeers at caution. Over the past year, the western powers under Nato auspices have struggled to contain the battles in Ukraine from escalating into precisely what cold war theorists most feared. That is a destabilisation of the balance of power in Europe, leading to a widespread and catastrophic conflict.
They have so far succeeded. Russia’s outrageous bid to occupy and conquer all of Ukraine has been resisted. The line of contact with Russian forces has withdrawn into the Donbas region in the east, roughly the territory occupied by Russia with local support in 2014. Escalation has been avoided largely because western weapons have not deliberately been deployed on Russian soil. Nato has enabled Ukraine to put up a valiant resistance. The reason has not been to preserve western security but rather out of respect for its cruelly assaulted sovereignty. It is not a respect the west has always shown, as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
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Here are the latest photos of Zelenskiy addressing European parliament in Brussels:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday thanked EU leaders for their support in countering Russia’s invasion but urged them to supply even more weaponry, including fighter jets.
Zelenskiy said:
I am grateful to all of you who are helping, grateful to everyone who understands how much Ukraine right now needs these possibilities. We need artillery guns, shells for them, modern tanks, long-range missiles, modern aircraft.
He added:
“We need to strengthen the dynamics of our cooperation more powerfully than the aggressor can mobilise its potential.”
Russia stripped of hosting 2025 swimming world championships
Russia was stripped of hosting the 2025 swimming world championships on Thursday and Singapore was awarded the event by the governing body of the sport, AP news reports.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked the governing bodies of sports not to stage events in Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia had originally been chosen in 2019 to host the event in Kazan, which also held the championships in 2015.
In a statement which did not mention Russia, the World Aquatics president, Husain Al-Musallam, said:
Singapore has everything we hope to share with our athletes: world-class facilities, proven experience of hosting events of the highest quality and a comprehensive approach to aquatic sports that runs from elite level to the community.
The Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters called for an immediate ceasefire in an address to the UN security council on Wednesday.
Speaking upon the invitation of the Russian ambassador to the council, Waters called on world leaders to “change course”, saying:
From the 4 billion or so brothers and sisters in this voiceless majority who together with the millions in the international anti-war movement represent a huge constituency, enough is enough.
The US deputy ambassador to the UN, Richard Mills, responded by questioning Water’s credentials to address the council on the conflict and then deferred to the Ukrainian representative, Sergiy Kyslytsya, who accused the musician of unwittingly becoming a tool for Russian propaganda.
Kyslytsya said:
How sad for his former fans to see him accepting the role of just a brick in the wall – the wall of Russian disinformation and propaganda.
UK will not send fighter jets to Ukraine if there is risk to British safety, government says
The UK has an eye on “potential escalatory risks” as it considers sending warplanes to Ukraine, Downing Street has told PA news.
When asked about some western allies’ concerns that supplying jets could risk dragging Nato into the conflict, the prime minister’s spokesperson said:
Firstly we haven’t made a decision in terms of UK provision of jets, we are training currently. The UK is in the process of providing Challenger tanks and we have provided longer-range capabilities as well. We take these decisions carefully and we do it thoughtfully. We are aware of potential escalatory risks.
The spokesperson added:
But throughout we have been confident the approach we are taking is the best and quickest way to help Ukraine end this war, which is obviously in everyone’s interests. And it is Russia that continues to take escalatory action with their bombardment of civilians and continue their illegal war in Ukraine.
No 10 told PA news the government would not send fighter jets to Ukraine if it put the UK’s safety at risk.
“The UK has significant numbers of Typhoons and F-35s,” Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said. “Of course we would never do anything that would put UK safety at risk.”
He added that the UK would be working with international partners to “work out how we could supply (Ukraine) with Nato-standard capabilities”.
Sending Typhoons would require permission from Italy, Spain and Germany, while F-35s would need US agreement, the official said.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces were continuing offensive operations in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and had destroyed four artillery depots, Reuters reports.
In its daily briefing, the ministry said it had also destroyed a US-made radiolocation system and an M109 Paladin artillery system.
The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has tweeted a photo of himself and Ukrainian president Zelenskiy saying: “Welcome home, welcome to the EU.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is speaking at the European Council.
“You cannot have a free Europe without a free Ukraine,” said Zelenskiy, later adding that further steps need to be taken including sanctions against Russia’s drone, missile and IT sectors.
“In Europe you have to make this decisive step,” he added.
Angela Giuffrida
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has described Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s invitation to Paris, where he met the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as “inappropriate”.
The Italian press speculated that Meloni’s exclusion from the meeting and dinner held on Wednesday night at the Elysée Palace was a sign of Italy’s isolation in Europe and internal government divisions over its support of war-torn Ukraine.
“I believe our strength is community and unity,” Meloni said in Brussels, where she will meet Zelenskiy on the sidelines of a European Council meeting on Thursday. “But there are times when favouring internal public opinion risks being to the detriment of the cause, and this seems to me to be one of those cases.”
While Meloni repeatedly voices full political and military support to Ukraine, her coalition partners have been more ambivalent. Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who in the past was among the most vocal admirers of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and other Italian politicians recently criticised a plan for Zelenskiy to appear via video link on the closing night of the popular Sanremo song festival, saying his input was “out of place” for an entertainment event. Zelenskiy will now instead provide a speech that will be read out by the show’s host.
Relations between Italy and France have been frosty since Meloni came to power in October, particularly over issues such as immigration.
Dan Sabbagh
Ukraine fighter pilot: I could learn to fly western jet within three months
A Ukrainian fighter pilot who shot down five Iranian drones in one day has said he could learn how to fly a western jet within a few months – and help his country act as “a safe shield for the world” against Russian aggression.
Maj Vadym Voroshylov, a well known figure in his homeland, said he believed it would take “up to three months to learn all the combat tasks” given his years of experience of flying in a Soviet-era MiG-29.
Engineers could learn how to repair a jet like an F-16 in a similar time, the Ukrainian pilot added, because “ground crews can be trained simultaneously”, in an interview as part of Ukraine’s latest lobbying campaign for military aid.
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