US may send fighter jets to Ukraine; 15,000 Russian soldiers killed, 45,000 wounded, CIA estimates: Live Ukraine updates
A top U.S. military general says the United States and its allies are considering providing Ukraine with fighter jets, a decision that would sharply escalate the level of weaponry being sent to Kyiv.
Gen. Charles Brown, Air Force chief of staff, said the jets could come from the U.S. or its allies.
“I can’t speculate what aircraft they go to,” Brown said in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded for fighter jets for months, saying Russia’s air supremacy has been a major stumbling block in his country’s efforts to repel the invasion. In March, the U.S. and NATO scuttled Poland’s proposal to send its Russian-built MiGs to Ukraine. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said at the time the proposal might be “mistaken as escalatory” and could provoke a Russian military confrontation with NATO.
Brown said Wednesday that Russian MiGs won’t be sent to Ukraine, saying with a laugh that it will “be tougher to get parts” from the Russians.
“It’ll be something non-Russian,” he said. “I could probably tell you that, but I can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to be.”
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Latest developments
►Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state-controlled RT television that Russia has added parts of southern Ukraine to its focus, which officials had said was limited to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
►Britain will supply Ukraine with scores of artillery guns, hundreds of drones and 1,600 anti-tank weapons, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace announced.
►Collen Kelapile, president of the Economic and Social Council known as ECOSOC, said there is growing concern that funding for critical U.N. development goals including ending extreme poverty and hunger by 2030 might be neglected by Western donor nations supporting Ukraine militarily and financially in its war against Russia.
15,000 Russians killed, 45,000 wounded in Ukraine, CIA estimates
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “entirely too healthy” but the Russian military already has taken “significant” casualties in Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns said at the Aspen Security Forum. Burns dismissed persistent rumors that Putin, who traveled to Iran this week, is gravely ill from cancer or some other malady as unlikely.