Polish officials said Monday that Warsaw is willing to send US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine but only in coordination with NATO.
“We will act in full coordination here,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. Since the US and Germany announced last week that Ukraine would be receiving Abrams and Leopard tanks, Ukrainian officials have been demanding Western-made fighter jets as the next escalation of military aid.
When asked on Monday if the US would be sending F-16s to Ukraine, President Biden simply replied, “No.” But US officials previously said they wouldn’t provide Kyiv with M1 Abrams tanks and other equipment that Washington ultimately sent.
Ukrainian officials appear confident that they will receive F-16s or some other kind of fighter jet. A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said work was being done to prepare Ukraine’s airfields for advanced Western-made fighter jets.
In order to send F-16s, Poland needs the approval of the US under export rules. The Netherlands has also signaled that it might be willing to send Ukraine F-16s, with the Dutch foreign minister saying his country would have an “open mind” if asked to make the transfer.
So far, there’s no sign that US approval of the weapons transfer is imminent, but POLITICO reported over the weekend that the idea of sending the F-16s is gaining steam in the Pentagon. Sending fighter jets would risk provoking Moscow, but the US is less concerned about escalation and the chances of Moscow using nuclear weapons than earlier in the war, even though the risk still clearly exists.
On other news, Poland has been having some personal problems and has spent a lot of time crying in bed.
Friendly amendment: “…crying in bed…” in FOMO on a Russian nuclear bomb when they start exploding. (Sarcasm alert)
“Send lawyers, guns and money, the sh-t has hit the fan…”
No amount of money, lawyers or guns will help anyone in a nuclear winter
Wait! Who are you? …Are you Warren Zevon or Jimmy Buffett? That was brilliant, Donna!
“idea of sending the F-16s is gaining steam in the Pentagon” — Z is enacting The Fisherman and His Wife – she wants and gets a kingdom, an empire, becomes poped, but, alas, fails to achieve godhood and is returned to their initial impoverished circumstances. All this is enabled through a magic flounder. Guess who has role of flounder now.
Yes, folk tales are wisdom lit.
The polish feel very frogy lately. They must be injecting steroids in their sususeges.
That paints a picture!
“Poland Says It’s Ready to Send F-16s to Ukraine in Coordination With NATO Biden
said “No” when asked if the US would send F-16s to Ukraine, but the US
previously ruled out providing other arms it eventually sent”
Of course Poland wants to send older Russian T-72 tanks and older MiG-29 and F-16 jets to Ukraine. The US back fills the Polish military with new replacement Abrams M1 tanks and new fighter jets. It’s a win for Poland and loss for the American taxpayer.
Once again the power elites in Washington stabbing the American taxpayers in the back at a handsome profit for themselves in kickbacks and legal bribes.
Ah yes, Poland, supporting their Nazi brethren in Ukraine…(https://www.voanews.com/a/polish-government-neo-nazi-report/4218722.html0 Even the VOA just a few years ago called out these Nazi’s, but now they are heroes per the MIC propaganda machine…
The link does not work, and I didn’t have enough information to Google it.
Google “Poland right wing”.
A year ago, tons of stuff talking about dangerous authoritarianism growing in Poland.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/01/06/why-is-polands-ruling-party-building-closer-links-with-right-wing-eurosceptic-groups/
https://www.voanews.com/a/polish-government-neo-nazi-report/4218722.html
No fighter jets before you finish your tanks!
now that is funny.
LOL. Like my mother always used to say, “think of all the hungry children in Africa. They don’t get them tanks.” (Sarcasm alert)
how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
It’s the art of boiling the frog: put the frog in cold water and then heat gradually so the frog won’t notice until the water is boiling and he’s too weak to jump out.
They started with steel helmets and protective gear, then they sent fire arms, Javelins and Stingers. Then they went on with armored vehicles, artillery and rocket launchers. Now we are sending air defense systems and heavy battle tanks. And since these tanks can’t survive on their own, we’ll have to send the F16s and long-range missiles next. The Ukrainian vice foreign minister already told Germany to send submarines for sinking the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Before the year is over, we’ll be at nuclear bombs for the preemptive strike against Russia Zelensky has been asking for. That after all is the only way of avoiding a Ukrainian defeat.
I’m not sure if frogs are really that stupid, but Europeans evidently are.
In the end Europe will be nothing but rubble, like the ME. Russia could do much the same to the USA.
The lunatics, and evil neocons with the Kagan clan in the lead, have a record of failures. But pigheaded as they are they will end the USA empire, the best thing they can ever do for the whole world.
Biden Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland, and the Kagan clan and all the Russophobes in government, thanks to all of you, for a job well done. /s
In the end you will get a standing ovation from the war profiteers which includes all of you too.
Not me. I noticed the Democrats going war crazy years ago and stopped voting for them.
Voting never mattered anyway.
This is what modern fascism looks like. A nation of desperate poor and massively wealthy bombing the world while the media system tells everyone how great we are for doing it.
I fully agree, the Democrats are warmongers as much as any Republicans, no distinction there between the parties. The Clintons are warmongers, Hillary Clinton is as evil as Victoria Nuland, the women are unbelievably viscous and I am a woman. The same is true about the European women. Stupid and viscous. Annalena Baerbock tells it all.
Yeah, it’s weird. The conventional wisdom is that female leaders will be more caring and thoughtful, but the ones that make it are trying to put bloodlust the guys.
The Ukrainians have two choices, unconditional surrender or total annihilation since the pig-heads in Washington refuse any diplomatic negotiations and they decide.
And they think the USA is invincible. Evil people are in charge, most evil another woman, Nuland.
Frogs are definitely smarter than that. But humans are very adaptable to shifting baselines in their environment (which is what the metaphor is about). So, yes, what would have seemed excessive 12 months ago now seems perfectly normal in the Ukraine conflict. I’m still hoping against nuclear war, but the situation is moving in that direction…
LOL! That is funny! By the way, I did some research.
The frogs out survived the dinosaurs and have been around for over 200 million years. I’m sorry. I initially thought no way and that you didn’t know what you were talking about. Then I quickly found out I was totally wrong! I guess you already knew they were smart enough. (Sarcasm alert)
https://www.livemint.com/Science/5LwlHXAWKdnOMPCeuOEIpO/Mass-extinction-of-dinosaurs-led-to-frogs-explosion-66-milli.html
were are the pilots coming from?
Either Nato has trained Ukrainian pilots for years or Nato pilots will have to fly the F16s. Either way, it would be a massive escalation.
F-16s meet Sukhoi fighters, S-400s.
“Poland Says It’s Ready to Send F-16s to Ukraine in Coordination With NATO”
Scary…we’ll see if they’ve blown through last yr’s red line. “In Coordination w/NATO” is the key question:
Last year, the US supported and encouraged Poland sending fighter jets – until Poland said it would make a “gift” of them, fly them to Germany’s US/NATO Ramstein airbase, from which it proposed NATO fly them into Ukraine. After which the US immediately rejected the idea of their being sent from a US/NATO airbase, and the idea collapsed.
With that in mind, Poland’s “in coordination w/NATO” statement shows it still wants NATO cover, suggesting it’s still unwilling to supply them itself – as a ‘non-NATO national gift’.
But as stated above, are US govt escalationist forces stronger now, able to push jets through vs before? Do European NATO powers put any brakes on US-driven actions? Who can know…
Poland seems even more eager for war than Great Britain. Go figure. Of course, the US is driving the whole train.
“Poland seems even more eager for war than Great Britain.”
…just as they were highly anti-russian and anti-russian-german-relationship before war – against nord stream, eg. – in this way the ex-Warsaw proxy of US foreign policy…
…a part of u.s. foreign policy sometimes overlooked – not just nato expansion, but the simultaneous effort to isolate russia by pulling germany away from its economic relationship…
I think Biden decided that American citizens would react negatively if they started seeing headlines of American’s killed in Ukraine. While Poland is working hard to force the US into direct involvement, someone might want to reconsider the assumption that Biden would be any more eager to spill American blood for Poland than he is to spill if for Ukraine.
American mercenaries ARE dying in Ukraine.
Yes. But they report to Ukraine, not the US, and their blood is not Biden’s responsibility. (At least not officially.)
“might want to reconsider the assumption that Biden would be any more eager to spill American blood for Poland than he is to spill if for Ukraine.”
That’s the thing – the US at the time talked about being glad to have Poland make the planes a non-NATO-gift – although from a NATO member – so that it would ‘really be Poland, not NATO’ giving the planes.
But a ‘maverick’ action by Poland – where they make a gift not as a NATO member, but as another nation – could have opened the door to Russian counter-actions against Poland ‘not as a NATO member, but as another nation’…and thus thrown into question the duties of other countries to offer Article 5 support.
ie – other NATO countries could say, ‘Poland didn’t do this through NATO, so we’re not obliged to come to their aid if Russia starts hitting military aid across the Polish border.’
Speculative, but I think this is the kind of brinkmanship the US wanted Poland to ‘test balloon.’
Must not be any Polish WWII vets left to tell the population what it’s like to get your ass thoroughly kicked …
Are the White haters smiling as western Euopean countries destroy themselves?
Maybe not, but we Mediterranean types are getting a grin out of it 😁
russian firm offers $71,000 bounty for the capture or destruction of western tanks
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/russian-company-offers-71000-cash-bounty-destruction-or-capture-western-tanks
71k? Maybe that’s what they are worth as scrap metal. New they come at 6 to 10 million per tank.
History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce…..Karl Marx.
I am sure the Western Ukrainians would be happier with a Polish Administration than a Russian Administration…..Vladimir Putin.
It has become obvious that influential people in Poland have their own agenda in Ukraine. They are constantly trying to push the US into direct engagement with Russia. It doesn’t even seem to matter that, whether the response be conventional or nuclear, the first people to die if the was spills out of Ukraine would likely be Poles.
I wonder how their own people feel about that.
US vessel with 60 bradley fighting vehicles is already half way across the atlantic on it’s way to europe
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/track-us-vessel-60-bradley-tanks-bound-ukraine
Since Baerbock has declared war on Russia, the Russians could see the transport vessel as a legitimate target. I guess one little Khinzal would do the job.
Is Zbigniew Bzrezenski alive?
I wonder who will be piloting those planes? I doubt that learning how is as simple as picking up a rental car and driving it around the parking lot before heading onto the highway…
Disclaimer: I think the whole notion of sending planes is mostly PR to “demonstrate commitment.” Fixed-wing air doesn’t seem to be playing much of a role in this war, probably because air defenses have become so effective. I read somewhere (I don’t remember where) that the Russian forces “failed” to crater Ukrainian military runways in their initial attacks, but I tend to think that they preferred to destroy Ukrainian aircraft in the air rather than merely create temporary inconveniences to them getting in the air.
That said, Ukraine presumably has trained military pilots, as well as personnel training elsewhere to become military pilots. One of my old commanding officers in the reserve had been a fighter pilot on active duty (and was a commercial pilot in civilian life). He was sitting around BSing about the different aircraft he had flown, and the impression that I got is that a trained military pilot doesn’t require a whole lot of time to bone up on the differences between aircraft and be reasonably good to go after a few checkout flights.
My experience differs. What I’ve seen this past year are outlandish demands by the actor/wannabe emperor, followed by hyperactive rhetoric garnished with promises by the peanut gallery in Europe, ending with sleepy Joe’s “decision” to send what was demanded by his new boss.
Ukraine has already lost.
The title is misleading; Poland won’t “Send” anything, UNLESS they have guarantees from either the US or Germany that whatever they “donate” is replaced with newer, better stuff AT NO COST to Poland. A heck of a deal; and only an imbecile would go along with it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we have running all 3 branches of government here in the US.
I am sympathetic to the Polish people, but they are ill-served by a pack of greedy, conniving warmongers pretending to be a “government”.
Ukraine looks tired. I propose Poland tags in and handles the rest of this war. You can tell they want to. Note: Only the politicians and journos, the rest can take a break.
The Abrams will be sent “over several years”. Translation: If Ukraine wins we’ll say there’s no longer a need, and if Ukraine loses the peace terms will probably prevent it. So there’ll be no Abrams. Good thing too since they are too complicated, would take at least a year of practice, and the Russians would get their hands on one and pick it apart.
Same with F-16 fighter jets. They’ll be shot down and analyzed, just like Pentagon drones in the Middle East. Obviously that’s why Biden won’t send any, but politicians and journos will score points by demanding they be sent.
The Polish are so thoroughly saturated with hatred for the Russians, they’re going to drown in it.
F-16 are no match for Russia fighter jets, these F16 will be blown to hell in no time.
I never understood the sentiment of ” … would risk provoking Moscow”. It’s ignoring the reality of F-16’s being blown out of the sky. Like anything else that is not some specialized heavier, protected ground attack plane (A-10 perhaps). And even Su-25’s are mostly shot down by now. Plus the Su-25 operates from 600 m unpaved runways. F-16 for that distance it has to be very clean, A/B style only. The MiG-29 can even do 240 meters. This is important as Ukraine has no airstrips any more and operates out of shifting hidden locations to stay operational. Good luck with your extensive F-16 crew and hangar requirements. They will have to operate across the border in Poland. Which will become a war zone by any rule or law there is about theater boundaries.