White House Rejects Ukraine’s Suggested No-Fly Zone

The Biden administration rejected calls for a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine, arguing that it would be an “escalatory” measure.

Declaring a “no-fly” zone would require enforcement, and that would “essentially mean the U.S. military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on MSNBC Monday morning.

“That is definitely escalating and would potentially put us in a place in a military conflict with Russia. That’s something the president doesn’t want to do,” she added, noting the administration has repeatedly said that U.S. troops will not be fighting Russian forces barring a NATO Article 5 situation.

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While the United States has so far declined to go this route, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lobbied Biden to impose a “no-fly” zone over “significant parts” of the country, according to Axios.

“If the West does this, Ukraine will defeat the aggressor with much less blood,” the Ukrainian leader explained.

While the U.S. has declined to go forward with Zelensky’s request, the Biden administration has approved hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment while also placing significant economic sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian elites, and their banking institutions.

“The sanctions are heading in the right direction. In addition to disconnecting the Russian Central Bank from SWIFT and providing more Stingers and anti-tank weapons, we need the West to impose a no-fly zone over significant parts of Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

Implementing and maintaining a “no-fly zone” would be “an act of war” that “would trigger a conflict between NATO and the United States and Russia,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner in an interview, calling it a “terrible idea.”

Foreign leaders have pointed out their “ironclad” support for Article 5 of the NATO agreement, which says that if any NATO member gets attacked, it should be considered “an attack against them all.” It’s unclear that anything short of that would result in the U.S. getting pulled into the war militarily.

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“The role of the president of the United States, any president, is to make an assessment about what is in the interest of the United States, our national security interests, the American people, and certainly weigh very heavily how we’re leading the global community,” Psaki told reporters Friday. “It is not in our interest to be in a war with Russia. So no, we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.”

The U.S., which normally has more than 80,000 troops stationed in Europe, has deployed an additional 12,000 to European allies, and 2,000 more from within Europe have been relocated, though they will not be fighting Russians in Ukraine.