Overnight Defense

Overnight Defense & National Security — US rules out combat aircraft for Ukraine

by Ellen Mitchell 03/09/22 08:04 PM ET

It’s Wednesday, welcome to Overnight Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

The Biden administration has shut the door on a what it’s calling a “high risk” transfer of Polish fighter jets to Ukraine following a very public back-and-forth over the proposal the past few days.

We’ll lay out the Pentagon’s final say and what it means for Ukraine, plus the new White House warning on possible Russian chemical weapons, details of Vice President Harris’s trip to Eastern Europe and where the Iran nuclear talks are now that Russia has attacked Ukraine.

For The Hill, I’m Ellen Mitchell. Write me with tips at emitchell@digital-staging.thehill.com.

Let’s get to it.

No fighter jets for Ukraine

The Pentagon on Wednesday laid out a litany of reasons the United States does not support the transfer of aging Polish fighter jets to Ukraine, calling it a “high risk” plan that would likely heighten tensions with Russia.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a Wednesday morning conversation with his Polish counterpart, said the U.S. government does not support the transfer of MiG-29 aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force “at this time,” press secretary John Kirby told reporters.

The United States does want Poland to directly transfer the aircraft to Ukraine, nor does it want Warsaw to first give the MiG-29s to Washington to then give those to Kyiv, as publicly suggested by the Polish government on Tuesday.

‘High-risk’: “The intelligence community has assessed that the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” Kirby said.

“Therefore, we also assess the transfer of the MiG-29s to Ukraine to be high-risk.”

A surprise announcement: NATO ally Poland caught Washington off guard with the announcement it would transfer its fleet of MiG-29s to the U.S. military’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany, a move that would allow Washington to then move the jets to Ukraine. Kyiv has begged Western officials for the Russian-made combat aircraft, which its pilots are trained to fly.

But the Pentagon swiftly met the announcement with one of its own on Tuesday, calling the plan “untenable,” due to the geopolitical battlefield that is moving jets from a U.S.-NATO base to a non-alliance country to help in its fight against Russia. The Kremlin warned this week that such a move could be seen as NATO inserting itself into the conflict.

A red line?: The United States has already quickly moved to send Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal aid — including a $350 million package approved late last month — but Wednesday’s announcement appeared to draw a line at transferring combat aircraft.

Kirby said the U.S. is “not drawing a red-line here,” but would not detail “the sausage making of how this particular decision got made.”

Other options: The U.S. believes the best way to support Ukraine is “by providing the weapons and the systems that they need most to defeat Russian aggression, in particular anti-armor and air defense,” Kirby said.

Read the full story here.

WH warns Russia may use chemical weapons

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday warned of the potential for Russia to use chemical weapons in Ukraine after Moscow alleged the United States was housing biological weapons in Ukrainian territory.

Psaki called the claim from Russia “false” and “preposterous,” and she warned it could serve as a pretext for the Russians to deploy chemical weapons in their assault on Ukraine.

“It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent,” Psaki said in a statement.

A ‘ploy’: “This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine. Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern,” she said.

Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, claimed Russia discovered evidence of a program to develop anthrax and other biological weapons run by the United States in Ukraine, Reuters reported. She alleged the program was backed by the Pentagon.

Other responses: “This Russian disinformation is total nonsense and not the first time Russia has invented such false claims against another country,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. “Also, these claims have been debunked conclusively and repeatedly over many years.”

And Pentagon press secretary John Kirby at a Wednesday briefing called the claims “absurd” and “laughable.”

Read the full story here.

PENTAGON SEES INDICATIONS RUSSIA USING ‘DUMB BOMBS’

Russia has launched more than 710 missiles against Ukraine since its attack on the country began two weeks ago, and the Pentagon has seen indications that Kremlin forces are also dropping so-called “dumb bombs,” a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday.

Dumb bombs are munitions that are not precision-guided and therefore have limited ability to hit targets accurately.

The official said it’s unclear whether Moscow’s use of the dumb bombs is by design or by default due to potential damage to its precision capabilities. Nevertheless, the U.S. government is seeing “increasing damage to civilian infrastructure and civilian casualties” with the combined use of bombs and missiles.

Russia strikes hospital: The comments follow Ukraine accusing Russia of bombing a children’s hospital and maternity ward on Wednesday in the port city of Mariupol.

“Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted after the attack.

The hospital in Mariupol joins the dozens of other that have been severely damaged or destroyed since the start of the war, according to information compiled by a group of Ukrainian journalists.

‘No real ground progress’: Elsewhere in Ukraine, the U.S. sees “no real ground progress to speak to except in a couple of places,” the official said.

Russian forces have inched closer to Kharkiv, gaining about 12 miles in the past day, and are just outside the city. And the nation’s forces are about 9 miles north of Mykolaiv, the official said.

But there still have been “no significant movements” towards Chernihiv or Kyiv, the country’s capital.