Bausch, who spoke to RTL at the NATO Summit in Brussels on Tuesday evening, believes there are other more pressing priorities. First, countries must deliver the materials they have promised to Ukraine, including rockets, ammunition and tanks. The war has entered a decisive phase, Bausch said.
Bausch said that Ukrainian pilots are not trained to fly fighter jets.
“Training takes a long time. We also have to talk about maintenance, because these are not old, Soviet-era planes. It is complicated. We can envision it, but in the short term and leading up to the summer it is not effective. What they need is ammunition, so it was reiterated today that we should focus on that the next weeks and months,” says Bausch.
With a renewed Russian offensive piling pressure on Kyiv’s forces in the east, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged EU leaders last week to turn what he said were their “positive signals” into “concrete” words.
Some NATO countries are wary of supplying fighter jets, fearing it could drag the West closer to direct conflict with Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned that even if fighter jets were to be sent to Kyiv, it would not be in “the coming weeks”. Polish Premier Mateusz Morawiecki said his country “will not be the first to hand over fighters” but would welcome others leading the way.
Ammunition stocks are being depleted, as more is used than produced. Luxembourg’s defence minister underlined that the European defence and arms industry was outdated when this war began. “These stocks have to be filled again,” says Bausch. “But there are possibilities to speed up production in the future.”
Another topic on the agenda was Moldova, situated between Ukraine and Romania. There are concerns Russia could invade it too, even though Moscow has denied planning this. Bausch underlines that, especially coming from a country like Luxembourg, one should show support for the small country.
