Diplomacy Watch: F-16 crashes, Zelensky says they need more

Ukraine was dealt a blow this week upon news that one of the F-16 fighter planes it had waited so long for had crashed, killing the Ukrainian pilot inside.

While reports do not indicate that the U.S.-made plane was shot down by Russian forces, it wasn’t quite clear Thursday what had happened, as officials did confirm the plane crashed amid one of Russia’s massive missile and drone attacks on Ukraine this week.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the Ukrainian military said the pilot, Oleksiy Mes, “was killed in combat while helping repel the missile attack on Monday”:

Mes, call sign “Moonfish,” was one of Kyiv’s first pilots to be trained on the F-16. He was one of the better known Ukrainian pilots, appearing frequently in the media and visiting Washington, DC, to lobby the U.S. to send Ukraine the fighter jets.

With U.S. approval, NATO member countries promised to send 60 F-16s to Ukraine last August, with delivery expected from 2024 through 2028. The Lockheed Martin-made planes are listed at around $63 million each. Ukrainian Pilots were trained in the U.S. over the course of the last year, and just this week it was reported that the planes were being outfitted with the latest in electronic warfare capabilities. Ukraine finally received a “small number” in late July.

And not too soon. Following Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia in early August, Russia has been pounding targets all over Ukraine in massive barrages this week, and Ukraine has been meeting them with the new F-16 firepower. And yet, there is a growing sense that it will not be enough. Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky is asking for deliveries of more to be sped up as his military burns through its existing missile defense stockpile. “The attacks underscore a desperate problem for Ukraine: how to protect its territory with a limited number of air-defense systems and a diminishing stockpile of interceptor missiles,” wrote Isabel Coles and Nikita Nikolaienko at the WSJ earlier in the week.

But while the Ukrainians continue to push into Russian territory — the military was boasting as of Thursday it has control over 500 square miles and 600 Russian prisoners of war — we’re starting to get some sense that Zelensky may be seeing this as a way to bolster bargaining chips in any future negotiations with Russia. Ukrainian officials seem to be talking more often about the prospects for ending the war, and this week Zelensky insisted that the incursion was part of a broader plan to end the war and that he would be sharing this plan with presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this fall.

“The main point … is forcing Russia to end the war,” Zelensky said. “We really want justice for Ukraine. And if this plan is accepted — and, second, if it is executed — we believe that the main goal will be reached,” he said at a news conference of top officials on Tuesday.

But experts warn that the window of opportunity for their gambit may be closing because Russians appear to be digging in and are now acting increasingly dismissive of Kyiv’s references to potential talks and peace plans.

“This is not the first time that we have heard such statements from representatives of the Kyiv regime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the plan. “We are continuing our special military operation and will achieve all of our goals.”

This follows Russian denials last week of reports that both sides were set to attend indirect talks over the conflict, but they were later scuttled because of the Ukrainian incursion.

In other Ukraine War news:

— According to a report in the Associated Presson Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not going to be pulling troops from the front lines in Donbass to deal with the incursion in Kursk, despite the need for more manpower in those border areas of Russia.

“Putin’s focus is on the collapse of the Ukrainian state, which he believes will automatically render any territorial control irrelevant,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

— Russia claims that the Reuters consultant who was killed in a Russian missile strike in the eastern city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine on Aug. 24 was a British spy, a charge that has been vociferously denied by Reuters. Two other Reuters journalists were hurt in the incident. According to the Washington Post, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed without evidence that Ryan Evans, 38, was registered as a former employee of MI6, an arm of the British secret services. “But we are well aware that there are not former MI6 employees,” she said.

— A column by Gideon Rachman for the Financial Times suggests that Zelensky may be pushing the U.S. too far and crossing its “red lines” in its Ukrainian incursion. He even suggests Washington did not know about Ukraine’s advance into Russian territory. He cites a new book by New York Times reporter David Sanger, who reportedly refers to Biden’s shared concerns with White House aides “that Zelenskyy might be deliberately trying to draw America into a third world war.”

— Russia is warning that if Ukraine does not renew a key deal for Russian natural gas to traverse Ukraine, Europeans will be faced with high energy prices as they are forced to turn to alternative European and U.S. sources. According to Reuters, Ukraine has repeatedly said it has no plans to renew the gas transit deal amid the current conflict. It expires Dec. 31.

— Russia said it banned 92 individuals from entering the country including journalists from major American newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the list released Wednesday was in response to the Biden administration’s “Russophobic course.”