The military’s top general cautioned that F-16s won’t act as a “magic weapon” for Ukraine, but the U.S. is fully behind a group of NATO allies taking the lead on training and potentially transferring the jets to Kyiv.

“The Russians have 1,000 fourth-generation fighters,” Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley told reporters at the Pentagon following a virtual meeting of the multinational Ukraine Defense Contact Group. If you’re gonna contest Russia in the air, you’re gonna need a substantial amount of fourth and fifth generation fighters, so if you look at the cost curve and do the analysis, the smartest thing to have done is exactly what we did do, which is provide a significant amount of integrated air defenses to cover the battlespace and deny the Russians the airspace.”

Fighter jets are vastly more expensive than artillery rounds and ground vehicles, which Western allies have focused on flooding into Ukraine to help push Russian forces back in the south. Spending the money on those near-term weapons, as opposed to expensive warplanes with their complex logistical needs, has been worthwhile, Milley said.

“If you look at the F-16, 10 F-16s [cost] a billion dollars, the sustainment cost another billion dollars, so you’re talking about $2 billion for 10 aircraft,” Milley said, adding that if the planes had been sent sooner, they would have eaten up the funding for those other capabilities that have put Ukraine on their front foot.

“There are no magic weapons in war, F-16s are not and neither is anything else,” he said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that Denmark and the Netherlands are taking the lead in the joint coalition to train Ukrainian pilots on modern fighter jets. He said Norway, Belgium, Poland and Portugal have also pledged to take part in the training.

The coalition plans to train roughly 20 Ukrainian pilots initially, although the exact number will depend on the countries’ capacity to support the project, according to a UK government spokesperson, who was granted anonymity to discuss details ahead of an announcement.

Ukraine will require a pipeline of pilots to learn the fundamentals of flying who can then move up to jets, the spokesperson said. To that end, the first stage of instruction will focus on ground-based basic training of Ukrainian pilots, who will then be ready to learn specific airframes, such as the F-16 and others. The F-16 training will take place at a site in Europe, Defense Department officials have said.

As French President Emmanuel Macron travelled back from Beijing in April, he sparked an uproar. Speaking to reporters, Macron stated that European and U.S. interests were diverging, particularly in their approaches toward Asia. Washington greeted Macron’s comments with dismay. However, the French president’s remarks intensified the simmering debate over whether the United States should seek to pull European states into its competition with China, or should instead reduce its leading role in the defense of Europe in order to prioritize security needs in Asia, writes ‘Foreign Affairs’.

For many analysts in Washington, the latter move would be a costly mistake.

The United States’ defense commitments in Europe would validate the grim picture that China and Russia now paint of a United States that is pitilessly self-interested and transactional, and would severely undermine the United States’ painstaking attempts to build a reputation as that rare great power that offers something to the world other than naked ambition.

This is a common refrain among those who believe that any meaningful U.S. military drawdown from Europe — most likely involving other states stepping up to shoulder the lion’s share of the defense burden — would sever U.S. ties with the continent and even the world. Pulling back, they argue, is prohibitively risky, would save little money, and could destroy broader cooperation between the United States and Europe.

This concern is overblown. It rests on excessive optimism about the United States’ ability to deter both China and Russia indefinitely and on unwarranted pessimism about the trajectory of a more capable Europe. In reality, countries on both sides of the Atlantic would benefit from transferring most of the responsibility for defending Europe to Europeans themselves, allowing the United States to shift to a supporting role. The result is more likely to be a balanced and sustainable transatlantic partnership than a transatlantic divorce.

The case for European defense is straightforward: with the rise of China and the intensification of the Chinese-U.S. rivalry, the United States gains little and sacrifices much by serving as the primary security provider for European countries that can afford to fund their own defense against Russia.

The United States is not capable of conducting full-scale operations against China and Russia simultaneously.

A significant peacetime presence in both theaters is feasible in the short term. But war in at least one region is a real and growing possibility that cannot be discounted. Direct conflicts with China or Russia have become likelier in recent years, and there is a sizable gap between the rhetoric of U.S. leaders and the country’s military capabilities. Although policymakers talk about deterring both China and Russia indefinitely, the 2018 National Defense Strategy effectively abandoned plans for the United States to maintain forces sufficient to fight wars in two regions — let alone against two major powers — at once.

Today, the United States military is not capable of conducting full-scale operations against China and Russia simultaneously. The United States’ adversaries know this, and the knowledge may embolden them to test Washington’s commitments. Peacetime deterrence and wartime defense, in other words, are connected.

It would be foolish to ignore the medium- and long-term risks. A future crisis over Taiwan or the nearby Diaoyu/Senkaku islands could abruptly pull the United States away from Europe. Such a situation could hand Russia an opportunity to challenge or invade suddenly exposed neighbors. To count on the United States always being able and willing to devote significant additional resources to Europe, should war break out, is to put all the transatlantic alliance’s eggs in one already overloaded basket.

Even if deterrence succeeds in both theaters for the time being, maintaining the status quo imposes significant tradeoffs.

Strategic priorities will ultimately dictate how the United States organizes its forces and which weapons it chooses to procure. If Asia is consistently deemed to be the most important theater for U.S. interests, then the Pentagon will put a premium on procuring systems and designing forces optimized for conflicts in the Indo-Pacific. This means that it will devote fewer resources to those assets better suited to Europe (or the Middle East, for that matter). Likewise, the relative strength of the services will be determined by strategic priorities—and how they shape the defense budget. In the long run, European defense needs will be in competition with Asian ones.

Orchestrating the defense of Europe is costly for the United States, and not just in dollars and cents. Acting as Europe’s protector fuels U.S. hubris and allows Washington to discount the often valuable advice of its friends. When western European governments spoke out against the war in Iraq in 2003, they were ignored even though they were right. If Europe had greater strategic autonomy, Washington would be less prone to engage in the fantasy that the United States alone can shape the world as it wants. U.S. dominance also infantilizes European states by treating them as incapable of providing security for their own citizens and reducing their agency in foreign policy. And it is increasingly risky, as a darkening strategic picture creates the prospect of a sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces under dire circumstances.

Better, then, to empower European allies to begin to fill future gaps in U.S. capacity. The original goal of U.S. policymakers in the decade after World War II was to help Europeans get back on their feet and defend themselves. Yet rather than recognize that these countries are now capable of doing so, some officials in Washington ironically seem to fear this real success, grasping for a reason to make the U.S. presence in Europe permanent and extend U.S. defense commitments further.

The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced May 20 that all of Bakhmut has been taken. He also said that on May 25 the Wagner forces will hand over control to the Russian army and pull back for rest and retraining. Some Wagner forces will be used in defensive positions that are not sent back for training and rest, writes “Asia Times’.

While Ukrainian sources are claiming Bakhmut was ‘unimportant’, the long battle over nine months was ordered by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reportedly against the advice of his military commanders.

There are now unconfirmed rumors circulating on Telegram Messenger, where most of the Russian “mil” bloggers operate, that Ukraine’s top general, Valerii Zaluzhny, may be dead. He has not been seen or heard from for some days. 

Also strange is that Zelensky himself would run off to the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan just as one of Ukraine’s most important battles concluded. There is a sense, no more than that, that there is substantial political turmoil in Kiev that could change the direction of the country and the war.

…Bakhmut is a city of 75,000, at least before the war, in the Donetsk region and is strategically located. It is known as “Salt City,” which refers to the huge underground salt mines that are actually located nearby in Soledar, which fell to the Russians in late January of this year.

The city is a major roadway nexus and also features important rail connections. According to recent reports, the Wagner forces were surprised to find some civilians still living in the devastated city.

Prigozhin thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And thanks to Vladimir  Putin for giving us this opportunity and the high honor of defending our homeland.” He also thanked Generals Sergei Surovikin and Mikhail Mizintsev, who “made it possible to carry out this difficult operation.”

The role of these two top Russian generals in Wagner indicates that the group has transitioned fully from a “private” military organization to a part of the Russian armed forces, and thus follows Russian command decisions in its operations. While Prigozhin is the face of Wagner, he has no military experience.

Almost all standing structures in Bakhmut have been damaged severely or destroyed completely. The Ukrainian army actually blew up a number of buildings as they retreated so Wagner forces could not use them for firing platforms.

It isn’t clear what next steps will be carried out by the Russian army. On the previous night, Russia carried out another large-scale bombing of Ukrainian targets and also claimed they shot down a number of HIMARS rockets and Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

There is still fighting on Bakhmut’s northern flank outside the city, but after some gains by the Ukrainian army, the Russians are now reversing them and retaking lost ground.