Fighter jets and ‘wings of freedom’: Will supplying aircraft bring the UK closer to war with Russia?

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky recent mini European tour – including a visit to the UK – was taken up by an appeal for fighter jets to bolster his Ukraine’s fightback against Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces.

“I appeal to you and the world with simple and yet most important words: combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom,” he told a rapt audience in parliament.

“Two years ago, I left parliament thanking you for the delicious English tea. Today I will leave Parliament thanking all of you in advance for powerful English planes.”

He gifted House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle a Ukrainian fighter pilot’s helmet inscribed with the message, “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it,” before meeting King Charles III at Buckingham Palace and telling him: “In Britain, the king is an airforce pilot. In Ukraine, today, every airforce pilot is a king.”

Mr Zelensky, a former sitcom star, is an unquestionably charismatic and brave man admired around the world for staying put in Kyiv when Ukraine came under attack last year, refusing all offers to leave when his own life and those of his loved ones were under direct threat by insisting: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

He appeared to have done enough to inspire a complete turnaround in UK foreign policy, with prime minister Rishi Sunak – who had previously ruled out sending planes to Ukraine as “not practical” – ending the day by asking defence secretary Ben Wallace to investigate “what jets we may be able to send”, according to No 10.

“When it comes to the provision of military assistance to Ukraine, nothing is off the table,” Mr Sunak had said earlier at a joint press conference, at which he also confirmed plans to expand training for Ukrainian pilots in Shropshire.

“That’s because we’re determined to ensure the president and his people can be victorious against Russian aggression.”

Downing Street has stressed that it considers the delivery of jets a “long-term” prospect and a matter for negotiation with Britain’s allies, however, also warning that the training required usually takes around five years to complete.

Mr Zelensky, who has recently expressed impatience with allied dithering, had already rebuffed this objection at the press conference, remarking: “Come on, we will be sending you pilots who’ve already trained for two and a half years.”

But members of Britain’s defence establishment raised similar doubts, with former UK national security adviser Peter Ricketts saying that the appeal for planes is “not going to work” because UK jets need “very specialised ground crews”.

On the question of Typhoon jets specifically ­– which former PM Boris Johnson, a close friend of Mr Zelensky, has loudly lobbied for ­– Mr Ricketts said: “You can’t just hand over the keys to an experienced pilot and they can fly the plane away.”

Lord Richard Dannatt, former chief of the general staff, told the i newspaper he felt similarly: “We don’t have a huge stock of modern fast jets to spare. I don’t think there’s any question on giving them F-35s from carriers. Our Tornados are coming out of service. So, that just leaves Typhoons, which will take weeks going into months to train Ukrainian pilots in.”

Mr Ricketts suggested American F16 fighter planes might be a “better bet” for Ukraine because there are plenty of them already stationed in Europe.

The Independent’s Kim Sengupta agreed with that assessment, commenting: “This would make sense in terms of operational support and maintenance, and they are the type of plane the Ukrainians need, just as German Leopard 2s are the logical tanks for their army.”

However, while Congress has approved $100m (£83m) to train Ukrainians in the use of American warplanes under the National Defence Authorization Act, US deputy national security adviser Jon Finer recently expressed a degree of scepticism about actually handing over planes, saying the matter would have to be discussed “very carefully” with Kyiv and its allies for fear of further inflaming tensions with Moscow at a time when relations are already at Cold War levels of iciness.

“We have not ruled in or out any specific systems,” he said. “We have tried to tailor our assistance to the phase of the fight the Ukrainians are in.”

The jets debate now moves to mainland Europe, where Dutch foreign minister Wopke Hoekstra has warned their delivery “would be a very big next step” and German chancellor Olaf Scholz has cautioned against competitive, performative generosity among nations over who can give Ukraine more, which he considers risks veering into gesture politics that “harms our unity”.

The Ukrainian president finished his recent vist to western Europe in Brussels for a summit at the European Parliament at which he reminded his fellow dignitaries that Ukraine is at war with “the biggest anti-European force of the modern world”, implying that, should his country fall to Russia, its neighbours could be next in Mr Putin’s sights.

“You need to win and now [EU] member states must consider quickly as the next step providing long-range systems and the jets that you need to protect your liberty,” the parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, told him.

Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki was more cautious, telling reporters: “Our position is clear, we can only act within the entire formation of Nato.

“We will not be the first ones to hand over the fighter jets, but we will respond positively, provided that those who have the most of these jets will be able to give them to Ukraine.”

Chancellor Scholz’s warning against getting carried away is worth bearing in mind for Britain particularly, which risks further provoking the Russian bear in its rush to ally itself with a popular and important cause.

The UK can be proud of its leading role in uniting the international community against Moscow ever since its illegal invasion commenced, imposing tough sanctions, delivering vital humanitarian aid and financial support as well as military training, weapons and armoured vehicles.

However, there can be no doubt what Mr Putin thinks of all of that – a further calculated provocation by the West waging a war by proxy against his country.

The Russian president’s initial claim that his “special military operation” was about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine never rang true and the year-long conflict has since evolved into a war attrition.

The Kremlin’s response to Mr Zelensky’s visit to Britain was to deride him as “an ex-comedian in a green sweatshirt”, dismissing his words as “pompous solicitations about the values of ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’”, branding them “overtly hypocritical”.

“Russia will know how to respond to any unfriendly actions by the British side,” it threatened, echoing a claim Mr Johnson made in the recent BBC documentary series Putin & The West that the Russian president had once threatened him with a missile strike on London during an official call.

Moscow also responded militarily to Wednesday’s diplomatic events by intensifying its attacks on the separatist Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, the scene of fighting since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Kyiv said that Moscow’s forces have concentrated their efforts on eastern Ukranian areas that Moscow is after, including Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut and Aviivka, while also carrying out air strikes and shelling in Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

The UK and Nato have previously resisted Ukrainian calls to impose a no-fly zone over the country to restrict Russia’s aerial threat, declining to do so because policing it would have raised the very real possibility of having to shoot down Russian fighter jets, thus engaging in the conflict directly and drawing the entire military alliance into war in accordance with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

That cornerstone of Nato’s founding treaty, drafted in 1949, states: “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

“Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

Ukraine is not a member of Nato, hence Article 5 is not currently an option. Poland and other nations close to Ukraine are signatories to the treaty, so such an act of aggression could potentially spark a wider conflict. So long as the conflict does remain confined to the Ukrainian theatre of war, the UK and Nato will prefer not to join the fight directly.

Delivering British jets to Kyiv would still not bring the UK into direct military conflict with Russia and therefore would merely represent an extension of present policy, not an advance towards greater hostilities. The head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that Nato countries supplying fighter jets to Ukraine would not make Nato part of the conflict.

However, what Vladimir Putin might do next remains to be seen, especially given that he is under pressure to deliver real results by the one-year anniversary of the invasion on 24 February.

The news that the average number of Russian soldiers dying per day has hit 824 this month, four times higher than the rate of casualties recorded in June and July 2022, will only increase that tension.

He and his regime have made empty threats throughout the conflict but Moscow’s capacity to realise them should never be taken lightly.

Downing Street is right to warn of “potential escalatory risks” from its actions in support of Mr Zelensky.