Ukraine’s appeal for fighter jets comes with a new urgency

Lindsay Hoyle brandishes the Ukrainian fighter pilot’s helmet presented by Volodymyr Zelensky during his address to British MPs on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s appeal for fighter jets in a speech to the British parliament comes as Ukraine prepares for an anticipated Russian offensive, with predictions that the worst of the fighting is to come.

It was only last month that Mr Zelensky finally secured agreement for the US and European nations to send Ukraine the tanks it requires to retake ground lost to the Russian invaders.

The first Leopard 2 was sent from Canada to Ukraine this week, but there are fears that Russia’s planned offensive may be in full swing before the bulk of the tanks are delivered. This would leave the Ukrainians weaker than they wanted to be when the long anticipated push begins.

Mr Zelensky and his senior officials fear the next few months will be the toughest and most decisive of the war, but believe comprehensively defeating Russia and avoiding a frozen conflict means ending it this year. That, they say, will be almost impossible without the gift of sophisticated fighter jets that can allow Ukraine supremacy over its own skies and the ability to push the Russians back, rather than simply defend the land they have held on to so far.

Before meeting King Charles, Mr Zelensky noted that in Ukraine “our fighter pilots are our kings”, before presenting Speaker of the Commons Lindsay Hoyle with a pilot’s helmet adorned with the blunt message “we have freedom, give us wings to protect it”.

Already, Russia is bringing tens of thousands of newly mobilised troops on to the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, just a fraction of the 300,000 new reservists it has to throw at the fight.

And throwing them it is. The fight for Bakhmut in the Donbas, where regular troops have now joined Wagner Group mercenaries in their thousands, is nicknamed the “meat grinder” for Russia’s willingness to send in waves of human cannon fodder to win yards of territory.

Ukraine’s military said that 1030 Russian troops had been killed on Tuesday, making it the single highest daily toll of the war. Russia claims to have inflicted 6500 Ukrainian casualties last month alone and while neither side’s claims can be verified, they speak to the intensity of fighting over what amounts to a tiny patch of land.

After Russia failed to capture the Ukrainian capital Kyiv last year and lost ground in the second half of the year, Moscow is making full use of hundreds of thousands of troops it called up in the autumn, its first mobilisation since the Second World War.

In the past few weeks Russia has boasted of its first gains for half a year. But its progress has been slow and incremental, with Moscow yet to capture a single significant population centre in its winter campaign, despite the mounting dead.

Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s national security chief, said on Tuesday that Kyiv expected the new Russian push to be focused on the northeastern areas of Kharkiv that were lost to Russia in a Ukrainian counteroffensive last year. Another potential target could be around the southern ­Zaporizhzhya region, pushing north from the corridor it has ­created linking Crimea to the Russian border.

Russia has typically launched fresh offensives in the time between the West promising Ukraine new weapons and them arriving in country with troops trained to use them.

The next few weeks provide two more incentives – the bitter chill, with temperature many degrees below freezing, is better suited to tank warfare, while February 24 marks the anniversary of the invasion and a moment for Moscow to reassess its progress.

“They (Russia’s leaders) need to have something to show … their people, and have a major desire to do something big, as they see it, by this date,” Mr Danilov said.

The Times