Swedish public radio reported Tuesday that Sweden is considering arming Ukraine with Gripen fighter jets, which are made by the Swedish firm Saab AB.
Sweden has previously ruled out sending Gripens to Ukraine over concerns that its military could not spare them. According to the radio report, before handing the jets over, the Swedish government wants to know how giving Gripens to Ukraine would affect Sweden’s defense capabilities and how long it would take to replace them.
Ukraine wants Sweden to provide one division of Gripens, which consists of 16-18 jets. Any plan to provide Ukraine with Gripens would involve training Ukrainian pilots, meaning the jets wouldn’t see combat in Ukraine until at least late in 2024.
Ukraine has long sought Gripens and other Western-made fighter jets. So far, Kyiv has been promised F-16s and Ukrainian pilots are currently being trained on the US-made planes, which won’t be completed until next year. US officials have stressed the F-16s will only benefit Ukraine in the “long term.”
According to Business Insider, Gripens are cheaper to fly than F-16s and are simpler to maintain. Another difference is that the F-16 is battle-tested, and Gripens have never seen combat as Sweden has maintained a long-standing policy of neutrality until it applied to join NATO last year.
So much for neutrality?…..
Yep that ended when Russia invaded Ukraine. Sweden upped its defense budget and ran to join NATO.
You say that as though it’s a good thing.
it kind of indicates that Russias goal of holding back NATO has been an utter failure. Through this war they have gained NATO border with Finland while losing half of their best tanks. An utter blunder. Ukraine was not likely to ever become part of NATO just if the low level Donbass conflict had been kept going. So Russia has effectively committed suicide from fear of death.
Which makes the world safer or more dangerous?
Agreed. The Russian invasion of Ukraine made the world a much more dangerous place. And the world will get more dangerous until Russia leaves Ukraine
While NATO encroaching even more just adds to the danger. And thinking a beaten and embarrassed Russia will make the world safer is delusional.
Or the jerry rigged US empire dissolves.
A shorter answer is that a defeated and embarrassed Russia would be less dangerous than a triumphant revanchist Russia.
Either way, the world will be much more dangerous as a result of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.
Without the USA hegemon with a demented president and a cabal of neocons the world will be a safer place, more than half the people on this planet know that.
The world would be safer without US imperialism or without Russian imperialism. There is a differemnce between liberationand revanchism. Putin is a revanchist imperialist.
Please, do provide a link of any instance of a Putin revanche. Putin reacts, he does not go out for revanche, not to my knowledge.
Putin is not a revanchist President, Biden is. Putin will pick up the pieces and work together with the loser.
I respectfully suggest you look up the meaning of “revanchism.” and explain how it applies to Biden in the context of Ukraine.
You make no sense, put the issue in context and think a little. What business does the USA/NATO have in Ukraine, the Europeans were coerced by the Americans, they opposed NATO membership for Ukraine for good reasons. But Germany is not a sovereign nation, the pipeline sabotage confirms it.
Biden took revanche on the Taliban in Afghanistan for his botched retreat.
Biden imposed sanctions and confiscated the Afghan people’s foreign account causing more suffering on top of the 20 years of military abuse of them and their country by the USA.
Speaking for myself, I am deeply ashamed for the criminal actions taken by the criminal Biden administration and all our criminal presidents before him.
Yes, the same country that is having a bitch of a time subduing Ukraine is going to continue on until all Europe is theirs. And I guess we can just all clench our sphincters and hope like hell a Russia with their ass firmly planted against the wall will act rationally. But everyone is convinced that no nukes will fly so why worry? One thing is for certain, the West will never admit to their 30 years of provocations, so we’ll never know how Russia might act if their security concerns were addressed. You know, those same security concerns that you wholeheartedly agreed with pre-invasion.
Unfortunately, Putin left the world no choice.
Some of the damage Putin’s invasion has done is permanent. I wanted Ukraine to have closer ties with Russia and I even justified the Russian annexation of Crimea (a mistake on my part). I realized my mistake in February 2022 when I woke up to Putin’s revanchist intention to reset the strategic balance of Europe. Behind Putin’s flowery rhetoric about a multi polar world is the ugly reality that Russia has been at war every
year since Putin took power in 1999, that Russia supports five secessionist statelets in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia that have engaged in ethnic cleansing.
Before 2014 there was a real possibility of detente between Russia and EU/NATO and closer ties between Ukraine and Russia. But Putin’s decision to resort to force ended the possibility of detente, silenced the Western critics of the NATO alliance, ended neutrality in Europe and drove Ukraine into the arms of the West.
I oppose US and NATO. But the fact is that since 1979 the US, Russia and Israel have been the most warlike countries in the world. I oppose Russian imperialism in Ukraine for the same reasons I opposed US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And you need to face the fact that what Putin unleashed in Ukraine is unstoppable national resistance. The military outcome doesn’t matter at this point. Even if Russia annihilates the Ukrainian army the Ukrainian people will resist until the Russians leave.
NATO was created to oppose Russia, it never, ever, was defensive, all the NATO ACTIONS WERE BY THE USA INSTIGATED AGRESSIONS.
The USA breaks treaties as it goes, it provoked the Ukraine conflict starting in with Clinton expanding NATO for no good reason, 2008 with Bush pushing NATO membership for Ukraine and on and on until the Russians had enough and had to act if they don’t want to be attacked by NATO WHICH ENCIRCLED RUSSIA.
Russia does not initiate regime changes, inflicts sanctions, breaks treaties, and steals other nations money deposits, only the US does that, a lawless pariah, hated by most of the global nations.
UK and France were worse imperialists than Germany and their 1939 alliance with Poland was intended to encircle Nazi Germany. And the Germans in Silesia were victims of discrimination by the Poles. Does any of this sound familiar?
Putin’s revanchism is wrong for the same reason that Hitler’s revanchism was.
A justified grievance does not justify a war.
True, 9/11 did not justify Afghanistan and Iraq and much more.
Did the Obama/Biden regime change have anything to do with Putin’s reaction to the provocations coming from USA/NATO?
Minsk, NATO style arming, training and funding the Ukrainian army, and NATO
military exercises in Ukraine close to the Russian border have anything to do with it?
Of course the USA would never have felt provoked if Russia and little Cuba would do that.
BTW, why does the US sanction Cuba continuously for more than 60 years? Who can explain that?
Venezuela, why is that country sanctioned? Did they threaten to invade or sanction the USA?
The US was wrong to invade Cuba and to impose a blockade in 1962. Like Dan Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, I oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the same reason we opposed the US blockade of Cuba in 1962.
But Kennedy learned he used diplomacy with Russia in the missile crisis, there were two statesmen with a sense of responsibility. Biden and his neocons have no sense of responsibility for the slaughter in Ukraine, Biden refuses to negotiate and blocked Zelensky from doing so back in Mar. 2022. By American standards Putin did what he has to do, to protect the Russian border is self defense, in Dec. 2021 he offered diplomatically Ukrainian neutrality and no NATO expansion, Biden said no. The criminal insanity on the Biden neocon side boggles the mind.
Obviously, no one can trust the US, least of all Russia. See what Biden did to his ally, Germany. Russia, President Putin had no choice.
This is not about trusting the US. It is recognizing that Avis is no better than Hertz. Putin had the same choice Hitler had. To accept his country’s status as a defeated second rate imperial power or to start hopeless revanchist war. Hitler and Putin both made the wrong choice. US/NATO imperialism does not justify Russian revanchism. Ukrainians sufferred for centuries under Russian imperial rule. Until 2022 I supported Putin and wanted Ukraine to align with Russia. But Putin’s decision to resort to force predictably bckfired and ended any possibility of detente between Russia and Ukraine, Europe or the US for at least a generation. In light of Russian support for five breakaway states and several other secessionist movements, Putin’s opportunistic support for a multipolar world is almost as hypocritical as US/NATO support for democracy.
Your comparison of Putin with Hitler is absurd.
Yes, you woke up and the previous 30 years of provocations suddenly didn’t exist anymore. Putin could have just sat back and enjoyed the war games on his border that were planned for 2022. The West was just on the verge of addressing Russia’s legitimate security concerns. So, logically, one day was all you needed to pick up on the new Hitler’s real desires.
Blame Bill Clinton for the mess. He bled Russia of money, then began assembling countries to join NATO to encircle Russia. Total f*ck up.
Joining NATO just to flip the bird at a large, nuclear armed country that wasn’t threatening you, or even planning to, has to be just plain stupidity. Do people have to pass a moron test to run for government in these countries ?
They should have to pass a moron test to run for office first, Look what we have in the oval office. The last real President the nation had was JFK and he was assassinated.
Russia has spanked Finland before – it can do it again… Seems Finland has effectively committed suicide.
Right, and what military alliance was Finland part of last go round?
When Finland had good government they negotiated neutrality with Russia, and it paid off. Now, like Sweden they had a one term, unqualified young inexperienced woman leader and both of these women threw neutrality over board without an honest national debate.
Both women were elected once and long enough to break down the neutrality and they lost in the next elections, they did their job and are not longer needed.
rigged elections? Maybe, it happens all the time.
Nazis.. Same as before.
Nazis.. Same as before.
Excellent point! While the war has been a catastrophe for Ukraine, it has been a strategic disaster for Russia.
It has been a real catastrophe for Europe, not Russia. NATO member states with the exception of Orban in Hungary have shi**y
governments to put it mildly. The German government is as sick as the government in the USA, intellectually and morally totally bankrupt.
But the Germans do have competent people in the right of center AfD, they are winning elections, the old parties are losing.
Not quite so excellent as you assume. Russia’s official position is that neither Sweden nor Finland add to insecurity re NATO, as the Russians have had little to no issues with either country in many decades, nor have Russian speakers there been treated unfairly.
In contrast we have Ukraine and its clown car Nazi presidency, and its pathetic excuse as a budding democracy.
You can’t seriously believe the Zelensky government is a Nazi government.
More likely the the neocons kill NATO. The sabotage of NS 2 & 1 and with it the end of the EU has made it clear who the enemy really is. The people in Europe don’t buy the Ukraine is winning narrative anymore.
You seem to be unaware of the official Russian reaction to the movement of Sweden and Norway to NATO. Perhaps you should read it before making a fool of yourself.
They have been anything but neutral for many years, the killing of Olaf Palme has never been solved, no more than the Kennedy assassination.
Go for it…. What could possibly go wrong poking the Super Huge Thermo Nuclear State…..??????
Free marketing plus the Swedes don’t like the Russians.
To be fair, the Swedes also don’t like Norway or Denmark, or Germany, in the same ways and to the same degrees as they don’t like Russia.
In a recent Swedish language TV offering I just watched, a plot point of an especially disagreeable man was explained to the audience in a simple phrase, “He is a Dane.” That is very Sweden. That bad feeling in Sweden toward the Danes also helps drive the plot in their hit show “The Bridge.” To be fair, that is mutual, and shown as such in the show. It is good for a laugh to outsiders.
Hitler should’ve invaded them before his attack on the eastern front.
Ukraine is now an official testing ground for military hardware, and Sweden wants in!
Ukraine is a crash test dummy.
They’re panicked it’s going to be over before they can get to the trough.
That’s probably what they were waiting for.
Durante: “Everybody wants to get in the act!”
Now we know, the Swedes, a de facto NATO member, wants to get in on the profits. If NATO survives, there is lots of money to be made rearming the NATO nations. Russia will be a big competitor with well tested quality weapons.
Even free Swedish meatball isn’t worth it.
Who will pay for them? Who will pay for the training?
“Sweden Considers Arming Ukraine With Gripen Fighter Jets Gripen’s are made by the Swedish firm Saab AB”
I smell a rat and that rat is Joey Biden.
Sweden Considers Arming Ukraine With Meatballs