Biden 'personally killed Polish jet deal' despite Republican AND Democrats ramping up calls to give Ukraine combat planes to make Putin 'fearful of what WE might do'

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Despite desperate please from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressure from lawmakers at home, President Biden killed the Polish plan to transfer MiG-29 jets to Ukraine, fearing the deal might be viewed as an escalation of tensions by Vladimir Putin.

The diplomatic blunder that began with a top European Union diplomat promising the jets to Ukraine ended when Poland suggested it would give the jets to the U.S. to deliver to Ukraine, and the U.S. said that was Poland's responsibility.

Then, U.S. defense officials killed the project entirely, saying they would not support either transferring the jets themselves or backing up Poland in doing so. 

'We do not support the transfer of the fighters to the Ukrainian air force at this time and have no desire to see them in our custody either,' Press secretary John Kirby told reporters Wednesday, as he described the sentiment of a call between Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin and his Polish counterpart.  

He said that the Pentagon had assessed the warplanes would not materially improve Ukraine's defense posture, while it would escalate the prospects of drawing NATO, of which both the U.S. and Poland are a part, into direct conflict. 

Critics have noted that the U.S. has already delivered hundreds of millions in lethal aid to Ukraine.   

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to US lawmakers over the weekend and asked them help facilitate the transfer of jets, including MiG-29s, to Ukraine. Ukraine currently has between 37 and 70 MiG-29s.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the U.S. and Poland of playing games with people's lives.  'Listen,' the Ukrainian leader pleaded, 'We have a war! We do not have time for all these signals. This is not ping pong! This is about human lives! We ask once again: solve it faster.'

Despite desperate please from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressure from lawmakers at home, President Biden killed the Polish plan to transfer MiG-29 jets to Ukraine

The Pentagon has poured cold water on Poland's offer to hand all its MiG-29 fighter jets to the US, apparently as part of an arrangement to deliver the warplanes to Ukraine 's armed forces where they are desperately needed to fight off invading Russian forces 

Poland said it was ready to deploy 'immediately and free of charge' all its MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the 'disposal of the Government of the United States of America'

'Do not shift the responsibility. Send us planes,' Zelensky demanded.    

Zelensky spent 45 minutes on the phone with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, where he begged her too for more jets. But skeptics within the Biden administration pushed back on the idea, and Biden himself agreed, according to Politico.  

'POTUS will do what the military advises here and the advice now is not to do this and instead send the Ukrainian government more things they can make good use of,' a senior administration official told Politico. Ukraine has 'many planes they already don't fly much because of Russian air defense.' The official added that it's 'not clear what sending more planes achieves.'  

However, both Republicans and Democrats called on the Biden administration to heed Zelensky's calls for more aircraft. 

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said it was time to make Putin 'fearful.' 

'It's time for Putin to be fearful of what we might do. This is war. People are dying. We need to get aircraft to President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine immediately,' he wrote on Twitter.  

Senate Foreign Relations chair Bob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote to Blinken and Austin this week calling on the U.S. to commit to replacing any aircraft donated by Poland and other NATO countries to Ukraine with American planes. 

'The Ukrainians are getting bombarded, and they do not have ― at least as their country's leaders suggest and assert ― the wherewithal to compete in the sky,' Menendez said during a committee hearing Thursday with defense officials. 

'I understand why NATO and the United States are not engaged in a no-fly-zone ― that it has potential direct conflict with Russia ― but I don't understand why we are not working expeditiously to facilitate planes to Ukraine.'

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, questioned why the U.S. felt comfortable sending Javelins and Stinger missiles but felt providing planes was too escalatory. 

'So you're saying that we would like to send something that's more effective that should offend Vladimir Putin more than the airplanes, and yet we cannot send the airplanes? What's the logic behind that,' said Portman during the hearing.   

The U.S. had a long list of logistical concerns in transferring the aircraft - and as Biden has promised not to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, U.S. pilots could not fly the planes into the war zone. 

The administration also considered the transfer of fighter jets to be a more aggressive move than providing Ukraine anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. 

Officials also said that the transfer may have been possible if it had been kept under wraps, Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign affairs and security policy chief, rendered a secret mission impossible when he announced to reporters that the European bloc would provide the jets, to the shock and dismay of many U.S. and European officials.  

Kyiv was only interested in handful of aircraft that its air force is familiar with, (which excludes U.S. jets) - the MiG-29, the Su-25, and the MiG-21. These aircraft are currently used by Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Slovakia.

Of these, the MiG-29 is best-equipped to take on Russia's aerial forces.  Poland currently has 28 MiG-29s. 

The Ukrainians hear Borrell's comments and ran with the idea, boasting that they would soon get 70 new MiG-29s. They even sent pilots to Poland to seal up the deal and bring the planes home, a Ukrainian official told Politico.  

But Poland killed such a deal when it announced no Polish jets would be given to Ukraine.  

'Poland won't send its fighter jets to Ukraine as well as allow to use its airports. We significantly help in many other areas,' the Polish Chancellery of the Prime Minister wrote in a tweet Sunday.

Still, the Biden administration pressed forward with a three-way deal.  

Sec. of State Antony Blinken first announced on Sunday that the U.S. was in talks with Poland to backfill their supply of MiG-29s with American F-16s if they offered the warplanes to Ukraine. 

He said that Poland had a 'green light' to sent the war planes, and the U.S. would assist with backfilling their needs. 

'We're in very active discussions with them about that,' Blinken said on CBS News' 'Face the Nation.'  

Poland quickly said it would not be sending the jets directly to Ukraine, with both the U.S and Poland citing logistical issues but also quietly concerned with how the move could be viewed as an act of war on their part. 

Poland then suggested they would fly their MiG-29 jets to the U.S.'s Rammstein Air Base in Germany, where it would be up to the U.S. to deliver the jets back east to Ukraine. Kirby said that proposal was 'untenable,' before killing the transfer idea altogether.  

The administration was at first widely on board with assisting Warsaw in delivering the planes. But the Pentagon, along with members of the intelligence community, opposed the three-way plan, for fears it would provoke a direct conflict between NATO and Russia and concerns that the F-16s would have to be severely downgraded to provide them to Poland to avoid compromising the highly classified avionics systems installed in the planes. 

Biden sided with the Pentagon. The White House reportedly said it would respect Poland's decision of whether or not to offer the jets, but made clear it could not guarantee a speedy backfill of F-16s. Poland then shocked U.S. officials with its proposal to give the jets to the U.S. to deliver. 

U.S. troops fire Stinger missile from their Stryker armored fighting vehicle during Saber Strike military drill in Rutja, Estonia March 10, 2022. The U.S. and allies have delivered shoulder-fired Stingers to Ukraine

U.S. troops prepare to fire Stinger missiles from their Stryker armored fighting vehicle during Saber Strike military drill in Rutja, Estonia March 10, 2022. U.S. and allied forces carried out military exercises in Estonia Thursday

A Russian armoured vehicle sits by the side of the road in Brovary, to the east of Kyiv, after being destroyed in an artillery and rocket ambush that caused heavy casualties

'We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland's proposal is a tenable one,' Kirby said after the offer.  

The deal essentially fell through altogether when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he would not allow the Polish planes to land at Rammstein in Germany. 

'We might've been in a different place if this hadn't turned into the Poles putting this on the table,' a senior State official said, according to Politico. 

And after Kirby said the proposal was not 'tenable' he later took the podium before reporters to announce that the U.S. would not be party to the deal entirely. 

Gen. Tod Wolters, the U.S. European Command chief, shortly after agreed with Kirby.

'The transfer of MiG-29 aircraft will not appreciably increase the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Ukrainian Air Force currently possesses numerous mission capable aircraft that are flying daily. Adding aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is unlikely to change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force relative to Russian capabilities. Therefore, we assess that the overall gain is low,' he said in a statement. 

Most of the fighting in Ukraine remains a ground conflict, though the Russian air force has stepped up its airstrikes in recent days.