Biden and Macron confirm support for Ukraine, but details are lacking
Last week, the Chief of the General Staff of France, Thierry Burkhard, sent a letter to the United States and several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, the Baltic states, Denmark, and Sweden. The letter contained an invitation to participate in a training mission in Ukraine as part of a multinational coalition of instructors. However, the governments of Germany, Italy, and Spain expressed their disagreement with this initiative. Apparently, not all recipients have yet responded to Paris’s proposal.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France plans to train 4,500 Ukrainian servicemen, providing them with all the necessary equipment, for which French instructors will be sent to Ukraine. Russia, for its part, claims that French instructors are already present on Ukrainian territory. The United States has already declined to participate in this project, and therefore, this issue was probably not even raised during President Joe Biden’s visit to France.
In Europe, Germany has once again opposed the French initiative, considering it a too hasty escalation of the conflict. Notably, Paris did not send an invitation to Berlin to join the coalition of instructors. The Czech Republic also rejected France’s proposal, arguing that it is easier to train Ukrainian soldiers on its own territory than to send instructors to Ukraine.
During Biden’s visit to France, the leaders of the US and France confirmed their commitment to supporting Ukraine in the framework of NATO solidarity. However, the specific results of the negotiations remained behind the scenes. The French side’s organizers of the visit failed to arrange a lengthy joint press conference with Biden and Macron. The meeting between President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lasted only 30 minutes, after which standard assurances of solidarity with Ukraine were voiced without any new significant statements.
Some of Zelensky’s aides expressed disappointment with Biden’s cautious stance. For his part, the US President tried to persuade Macron to support a plan to confiscate frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit within the G7 framework. So far, Paris has only agreed to use the income from these assets. Washington hopes that by the June G7 summit in France, it will manage to convince France to support a plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan, which will be repaid with interest from the confiscated assets.
The relatively modest results of the US-French negotiations on support for Ukraine were complemented by another piece of news. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, according to Bloomberg, abandoned the idea of creating a five-year military aid fund for Ukraine worth 100 billion euros due to disagreements among alliance members.
Instead, a more modest proposal emerged: annual aid to Ukraine amounting to 40 billion euros, with the US expected to cover about half of this amount, and other NATO members contributing proportionally to their GDP. The first voice against this proposal has already been heard — from Hungary. So far, no enthusiastic support has been expressed, which is not surprising, considering that the European Union recently approved the allocation of 50 billion euros over four years. The new proposal is expected to be discussed at the upcoming meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. Some funds will likely still be allocated, but appropriations will need to be reapproved annually.
Another news item revealed problems with the preparation of Ukrainian pilots for F-16 aircraft promised by the allies. Ukraine hoped that the US would train at least 30 pilots, but by the end of September, only 12 will have been trained at the Air Force base in Arizona. Training centers in Romania and Denmark also cannot accommodate the required number of Ukrainian pilots. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway promised to deliver more than 60 F-16 fighters to Ukraine by the end of summer 2024, but only 20 Ukrainian pilots will complete their training by the end of this year, which is only half of the number needed to operate a full squadron of 20 aircraft.
The question of NATO country pilots serving as mercenaries to fly the F-16s has not yet been raised. However, given the current situation, it can be assumed that this issue may be considered in the near future, as the limits of escalation in this conflict have not yet been reached.
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