US F-16 fighter jets, which are soon to be transferred to Kiev, will not give the Ukrainian army an advantage due to the superiority of Russian troops, The Washington Post said.
“There are simply too few planes and too many Russian air defences capable of shooting them down. That means the first F-16s will likely serve to bolster Ukraine’s air defences – shooting down aerial targets such as missiles, drones and aircraft – rather than striking Russian infantry and other military targets near the front,” The Washington Post said.
The newspaper recalled that Ukraine was expecting the delivery of about 20 fighter jets, and such “modest assistance” signalled a deepening rift in relations between Kiev and its allies.
An unnamed Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that the AFU would not be able to use the F-16s in close proximity to the deployment of Russian Armed Forces positions because of the threat of Russian air defence. Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyy also noted that the US planes would fly at least 25 miles away from the line of contact and Kiev is unlikely to use the aircraft to strike targets on Russian territory.
According to the newspaper, defending the F-16s on the ground will also be a challenge for the AFU, given that all Ukrainian airfields are within range of Russian missiles.
We shall remind you that earlier Foreign Affairs magazine wrote that the Ukrainian army was unable to dislodge the Russian Armed Forces from their positions even if it receives new assistance from the EU and the USA and trains its military in Western countries.