Quibbling with words has always been my forte Vladimir Putin: his “yes, but” have characterized the last twenty years of relations with the West and the Kremlin’s foreign policy in its entirety. A perpetual balancing act on words so as to never really say what it is: the invasion of Ukraine thus became a “special operation” to denazify Kiev, for example.
Invade Europe? “Total nonsense”
The question now arises again regarding the infamous F-16. While the rest of Europe is preparing to live with the idea of no longer living in a fortress, amid the ups and downs between hawks and unsuspected doves (think of the Macron-LePen clash over the sending of troops to Ukraine), Putin tries to convince the Union that it has no intention of invading the old continent with its troops, dismissing it as “a total absurdity“even just talking about it as a possibility. An idea that arises, according to him, “by a falling economy and deteriorating living standards“.
The idea of a possible Russian invasion of Europe was almost mocked by Putin, who branded it “a total nonsense that only aims to intimidate people into paying more money“. “This is not propaganda, but what is really happening. They have to justify themselves, so they intimidate people with a potential Russian threat as they try to expand their dictatorship to the entire world“, he thundered, recalling that in 2022 the United States spent 811 billion dollars on military spending, while Russia “only” 72.
The F-16 node
However, there is a gigantic “but”: the invasion is in fact out of the question only as long as some cornerstones demanded by Moscow remain standing. Putin met with Russian military pilots in the Tver region just last night, specifying an important detail: Moscow’s forces will consider how “legitimate objectives” the F-16s, “if they take off from the air bases of third countries” and if they are used against Russian forces. A general line valid wherever the warplanes that the West is supplying to Ukraine are located, keeping in mind account that F-16s can carry nuclear weapons. The detail was clarified while Putin was responding to those who asked him if the F-16s could also be hit at NATO bases, if used from there (a possibility that does not exist). The president then added that Moscow will be ready to destroy NATO planes in the same way that “today we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launch systems“.
In support of the inconsistency of Russia’s bellicose hypothesis in Europe and the need to respond to air strikes, Putin reiterated that Moscow would never have chosen to invade Ukraine if there had not been a coup d’état as well as military operations in Donbass, underlining the fallacy of the Minsk agreementswhich the Russian leader called “an attempt to deceive Russia“: “It turned out that we were deceived, dragged for eight years and in the end they simply forced us to switch to another form of defense of our interests and our people“, commented the Russian president.
F-16: a real threat to Putin?
But will the F-16s really turn the tide of the war?: One of the big limitations of supplies to Ukraine is the number of these aircraft. Initially, Kiev will receive six fighters, training for 12 pilots and about fifty technicians. Some northern European countries have promised the delivery of another thirty aircraft and it is estimated that, in all, the NATO group will be able to supply a total number of 60 aircraft. However, this is a small number to have a significant impact on the fate of the war.
However, aircraft will play an important role in contributing to intercept missiles with which Moscow strikes the large Ukrainian cities, helping Kiev to save missiles, whose stocks are increasingly limited.
