:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/3FRPW765UIHVXIOUQHSAD5OMRE.jpg "Republicans slam Biden for not donating planes to Ukraine 1")
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Republican lawmakers on Sunday slammed the Joe Biden administration for not sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine as tensions mount over whether China can send weapons to help Ukraine. .
But White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said they were providing Kiev with the military aid it needed to retake territory seized by Russia and that China had yet to provide any. military equipment. Domestic support for Ukraine is also complicated by some Republican lawmakers who say the government should backtrack and focus more on national needs.
Texas Republican Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that long-range artillery and aircraft could help end the war in the shorter term.
“It’s all taking too long,” McCaul said. “And it really didn’t have to be that way.”
Ukraine won backing from the Baltics and Poland last month in its bid to secure Western fighter jets, but there are no signs bigger nations like the US and Britain will change. their position of refusing to supply fighter jets to Kiev. Biden said in an interview with ABC News on Friday that he is “ruling that out for now,” saying they are not the weaponry Ukrainians need in the short term.
McCaul called the Russia-China relationship an “unholy alliance” and pointed to the risks an upcoming meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin could entail.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Dan Sullivan said the White House was slow to provide the military equipment Ukraine needed, including planes. “That’s been the pattern of this government from the beginning, in which critical military weapons systems have been delayed,” he said.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States was already supplying parts to keep Ukraine’s fleet of Soviet-era jets in the air, but supplying the F- 16 “is really a deal for us”. another day, for another phase” of the war, he told NBC.