Kinzinger: U.S. Will Send Ukraine F-16 Fighter Jets ‘Inevitably’

CNN political commentator Adam Kinzinger predicted Thursday on “The Situation Room” that the United States would inevitably send Ukraine F-16 fighter jets.

Anchor Wolf Blitzer said, “Ukraine has already pushed for even more weapons, very much on their wish list include fighter jets. Do you see that as the next step for western allies potentially?”

Kinzinger said, “Yeah, I think what we need to understand here is pretty much everything Ukraine has pushed for. It’s taken a while for the U.S. and the allies to finally agree they, in fact, need that stuff. Part of that is the United States doesn’t want to step out too far ahead of Europe. It’s keeping this alliance together. But I think, and here’s one of the biggest untold things that’s going on in this war, which is one of the struggles in Eastern Europe over the past decade or two has been they have old Russian equipment, how do they move over to NATO standard equipment, obviously very different supply lines and very different training and actually what this war has done is flushed a lot of that Russian equipment in Eastern Europe into Ukraine. They’ve started bringing a lot of these Eastern European countries back into total NATO standards. In Ukraine, I think we have to look and recognize Ukraine will be a NATO standard military equipment country that includes F-16s. They have an excess capacity of pilots. I have talked to them. I, in fact, led the last effort in Congress to begin training them that can come here and learn the F-16. It will take a couple of months because it’s a very different mission set and, of course, weapons system. That way, they’re ready if and probably inevitably when the U.S. and the west decide to send F-16s that way.”

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