No Deus Ex Machina: F-16s Will Become Zelensky’s ‘Steiner Counterattack’ Moment
© AP Photo / NYOTK
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The F-16s that arrived recently in Ukraine will not change the reality on the battlefield and will mark the end of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s never-ending quest to find a NATO weapon that could push the Russian army back.
Throughout the conflict in Ukraine, advocates for continuing the conflict continually pointed to the next Western weapon that would arrive in Ukraine and finally demonstrate the superiority of NATO technology over the Russians. First, it was the Javelin Weapons System. Then it was the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, then the Leopard tank, then the Leopard II tank, then the HIMARS, then the ATACMS, and finally the Abrams tank.
“Now, it's F-16s and there's really no next level up,” veteran journalist Nebojsa Malic told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday. “It’s just been one of those [things], trying to drag the US and NATO into the war so they would ramp up their commitment to actually not back out. And unfortunately, this is sort of the final stop on that train.”
Every previous alleged game-changing weapon failed to turn the tide, as Russia had an effective countermeasure for each of them. The only remaining weapon that NATO is willing to give Ukraine is the F-16 fighter jet. Promised a year ago, it took far longer than predicted to train Ukrainian pilots on the system. Now that they’ve finally arrived, it is suspected that Ukraine only received a handful of fighter jets. Previously, Zelensky said he would need hundreds of them to protect the skies over Ukraine.
It is unclear what the F-16s will be used for, though Ukraine has claimed they have already utilized them for air defense, it is suspected that they will be used to counter the glide bombs Russia has used to great effect on the front lines. The problem is that the glide bombs cost significantly less than the F-16’s missiles and Russia can produce them domestically, while Ukraine will have to hope and wait for further weapon deliveries, assuming the F-16s survive that long.
“The problem is that the Russians have longer range, very effective standoff missiles, so that [Ukrainian pilots] would really have to get in close to lock onto the Russian planes and shoot them down with these American missiles that they don’t have very much experience with, provided that they’re provided in adequate quantities, which we don’t know,” explained Malic.
Previously, Ukraine relied on MiG-29s, but those have been virtually wiped out. “A lot of them didn’t even get shot down in dogfights or by air defenses. They just got plastered at airports because these airbases got hit by ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and drones,” added Malic, noting that the F-16s require “pristine” runways, which are in short supply in Ukraine since Russia has been striking them across the country.
Some pro-Ukrainian pundits have claimed that it was the West inaction that led to Ukraine’s inevitable defeat, that if only the West sent more Bradleys, more Leopards, more HIMARS, more Abrams and sent them quicker, then it would have been enough to overcome the odds, but that too is foolhardy, argued Malic.
“[The West] didn’t have the equipment to give at any single point. That’s the issue. They couldn’t provide it. The logistics didn’t exist. If they tried to ship all of the stuff over to Ukraine in a week, it would get destroyed on the border because Russia has missiles that [they] don’t have any defense against, and this is what people fail to understand.”
The West doesn’t have any more weapons to give and Ukraine doesn’t have any troops to operate the weapons. The only option left for Ukraine is to sue for peace.
“But they’re refusing because Zelensky’s publicly-stated goal is to basically get NATO to unite behind this peace plan he proposed two years ago, which is essentially Russia surrenders and we win, which is ludicrous and is never going to happen,” Malic said, noting that the sooner Zelensky gives up on his delusions, the sooner people can stop dying.
As far back as November 2023, some of Zelensky's closest allies told US media that their leader’s belief in a complete Ukraine victory is “immovable, verging on the messianic,” one of his closest aides went as far to say that “He’s delusional. We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”
“He’s got delusions of grandeur. Everybody, even his own surroundings, seems convinced of this,” Malic explained, noting that Zelensky was an actor before he was President and his chief of staff was a movie producer.
“It's all a TV show for them. They live in a parallel reality, literally in a parallel reality. We think the politicians in the West are detached. My God, they've got nothing on these guys. And so, they inhabit this parallel universe in which everything is going great and everything's going to be good [and] resolved by the Steiner [counter] attack. And there's not a single Ukrainian general who's willing to tell him, like in that famous bunker scene [from the 2004 movie Downfall], that the Steiner attack is not happening. There isn't an army there.”
“It’s going to end when Ukraine surrenders,” Malic contended. “You can quote me on that.”
