Yesterday, Russian missiles hit the city of Vinnytsia. After that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on NATO to set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine to stop the Russian bombardment. He’s not going to get what he wants.
A no-fly zone is a place where you can’t fly. Don’t think too hard about it; it’s an area where some planes can’t fly. They were first used in the Persian Gulf War, but they have been used in many other places, including at the Olympics.
Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California have even had planes banned from the sky since 2003.
The problem for the United States and NATO is that no-fly zones need to be enforced by military forces, which is not good for them. The West would have to act if Russian planes broke into airspace that was supposed to be off-limits. This would put the West and Russia in direct conflict, which would be bad for everyone. They don’t want to fight head-on, because that could lead to World War III.
Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “What we want to do is end this war in Ukraine, not start a bigger one.”
In the MiG-29,
With their rejection of Zelensky’s call for a no-fly zone, the US and Europe said they’d be willing to aid the Ukraine’s air force in a different way: by giving Ukraine Soviet-era MiG 29 fighter jets, which are desperately needed to keep the Russians from taking air power.
NBA general manager would be proud of this three-way deal. Poland has MiG-29s that Ukrainian pilots are used to, but it won’t let Ukraine borrow planes without replacing them. So the Biden administration has said that if Poland gave up its planes to Ukraine, it could buy US-made planes for Poland’s air force.
This plan seems to be going somewhere. On Saturday, Blinken said, “We can’t give you a time frame, but we’re looking at it very, very hard.”
In the big picture, giving Ukraine fighter jets would be the biggest arms transfer so far in the war. But a lot of Western countries have already been helping the Ukrainian army. Anti-tank missiles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles are among the weapons being sent to Ukraine by about 20 countries, according to the New York Times. Machine guns, ammunition, and ammunition are also coming.