President Joe Biden will welcome the prime ministers of Denmark and the United Kingdom to Washington this week for talks focused on what lies ahead in the Ukraine war, including the recently initiated initiative to train, and eventually equip, Ukraine with American-made F-16 fighter jets.
Britain and Denmark are playing critical roles in the emerging unified international strategy that Biden just accepted after months of opposing pleas for US planes from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Biden’s separate talks with the heads of two major NATO allies — Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen on Monday and the United Kingdom’s Rishi Sunak on Thursday — come at a critical juncture in the 15-month conflict, as Ukraine prepares to launch a counteroffensive. It’s also a time when the US and Europe want to show Moscow that the Western alliance is still strong and focused on establishing a longer-term commitment to Ukraine, despite the fact that no end to the crisis is in sight.
“One of the things we’ll be looking for their perspectives on and the President will be interested in sharing his perspectives on is the long-term security needs of Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “And that’s really where the F-16s kind of come into this discussion.”
Denmark has bought dozens of American-made F-16s throughout the 1970s and has shown an interest in supplying them to Ukraine. Britain has consistently lobbied for a coalition to equip Ukraine with fighter jets and has stated that it will assist Ukraine in obtaining the F-16s it desires. However, the United Kingdom lacks F-16s and has ruled out sending Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters.
Instead, Britain says it would begin training Ukrainian pilots on Western-standard planes in early summer to prepare them to fly F-16s. The Ukrainian pilots will then continue their training in other nations.
The F-16 agreement is among several recent high-profile efforts by the US and Europe focused on bolstering Western resolve as the war grinds on. Russia’s Defense Ministry announced early Monday its forces had thwarted a large Ukrainian attack in the eastern province of Donetsk. It wasn’t clear if this was the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Last week, Frederiksen and Sunak were among 45 European leaders who travelled to Moldova for the first summit of the European Political Community where they underscored support for Eastern Europe’s ambitions to draw closer to the West and keep Moscow at bay.
Biden is also expected to discuss with Frederiksen and Rishi preparations for next month’s NATO summit in Lithuania which comes amid growing pressure on the alliance from Zelenskyy on NATO to offer Ukraine concrete security guarantees and a defined path for Kyiv to eventually win membership into the group.
The 31-member alliance is also looking at boosting Ukraine’s non-member status in NATO and preparing a framework for security commitments that it can offer once the war with Russia is over.
Max Bergmann, a former senior State Department official during the Obama administration, said Biden and his European counterparts’ task is to stay on the same page for what comes after Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive.
“Throughout this conflict, we have not only underestimated the Ukrainians but we have also underestimated the Europeans,” said Bergmann, who is now director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They’re not wavering but they will also need to keep finding new funds to plough into military equipment to support the Ukrainians. There’s a question on both sides of the Atlantic: How much will it actually take to sustain Ukraine?”
Biden is also expected to check in with Frederiksen and Rishi on his effort to press fellow NATO member Turkey to back off blocking Sweden from joining the military alliance.
Sweden and Finland, both historically unaligned militarily, jointly sought NATO membership after being rattled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkey initially blocked both countries from joining the alliance before agreeing to membership for Finland while continuing to object to Sweden.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has objected to Sweden’s perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, the leftist extremist group DHKP-C, and followers of the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara claims were behind a failed military coup attempt in 2016.
Erdogan won reelection last week to a third term despite his government’s struggle to deal with runaway inflation and the aftermath of an earthquake that levelled entire cities in the country. Now that his reelection battle is behind him, White House officials are increasingly optimistic that the Turkish leader will withdraw his opposition to Sweden’s membership, according to a US official familiar with internal deliberations. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Biden said he raised Sweden’s NATO application and Turkey’s desire to buy 40 new F-16s from the US — a move some in Congress oppose until Turkey approves NATO membership for Sweden — during a phone call last week with Erdogan.
“He still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden, so let’s get that done,” Biden told reporters shortly after the call.
Days later, at his commencement address at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, Biden spoke with certainty about Sweden’s NATO membership hopes. “It will happen. I promise you,” Biden said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken both expressed hope that Sweden will be brought into the NATO fold by the time allied leaders meet in Lithuania from 11 July to 12 July. Stoltenberg met with Erdogan on Sunday in Istanbul for talks but no breakthrough was made.
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