Ukraine Pushes for Planes

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Ukraine’s latest push for weapons, a warning from Australia’s foreign minister, and corruption around the world.

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With the promise of tanks from its Western allies now secured, Ukraine is pushing for a different piece of military equipment: fighter jets.

The United States and United Kingdom so far remain unmoved on the issue of whether to provide warplanes to Ukraine. Asked this week if Washington would provide F-16s to Kyiv, U.S. President Joe Biden said simply, “No.” He said on Tuesday that he would remain in contact with Ukrainians about weapons requests. The United Kingdom also said Western jets were “sophisticated pieces of equipment” and that it was not “practical” to send them to Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, said “nothing is excluded in principle” but that any potential delivery would have to “not be escalatory.”

Poland and the Baltic states support the sending of fighter jets.

“Ukraine needs fighter jets … missiles, tanks. We need to act,” Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said at a press conference in Riga, Latvia.

Of Biden’s “no,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said: “All types of help first passed through the ‘no’ stage, which only means ‘no’ at today’s given moment. The second stage is, ‘Let’s talk and study technical possibilities.’ The third stage is, ‘Let’s get your personnel trained.’ And the fourth stage is the transfer [of equipment].”

Even without the planes, Ukraine and its allies are dealing with the complicated reality of mismatched equipment, which comes with different training needs and maintenance demands. Another American concern with sending F-16s in particular is thought to, at least in part, stem from the concern that, since the planes could theoretically be used to hit targets inside Russia, transferring them could be seen as a serious escalation.

Australia’s foreign minister warns of “catastrophic” war. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong warned this week in London that all countries should work to prevent a “catastrophic” war in the Indo-Pacific, a region that, she said, was becoming “more dangerous and volatile.” Speaking at King’s College London, Wong said, “If conflict were to break out in the Indo-Pacific, it would be catastrophic—for our people and our prosperity.”

She also credited the United Kingdom for becoming more involved in the Indo-Pacific and urged China to accept Biden’s offer to agree on “guardrails” to keep tensions in check. She said she made this view known directly to her Chinese counterpart.

The Australian government also vowed this week to continue raising human rights concerns “at the highest levels,” even after Xiao Qian, Chinese ambassador to Australia, cautioned the country to keep from “trying to smear China” and take a more “constructive attitude” to stabilize relations.

Report finds corruption largely unimproved. A new report from Transparency International found that 95 percent of countries have made little to no progress in tackling corruption since 2017. The report also found that more corrupt countries are less able to protect their people. “Corruption has made our world a more dangerous place. As governments have collectively failed to make progress against it, they fuel the current rise in violence and conflict—and endanger people everywhere,” Transparency International chair Delia Ferreira Rubio said.

Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand ranked highest, which is to say they were seen as the least corrupt countries. Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria were at the bottom of the rankings.

Fresh wave of French strikes. For a second time this month, massive strikes against proposed changes to the country’s pension plan shook France, disrupting schools and transit networks. Sixty percent of teachers in Paris walked out, and more than 100 schools were expected to close. The strikes mostly impacted the capital, but there were 248 protests planned across the country. Macron has not yet backed down from the plan though and is still expected to gradually raise the age at which a person can draw a state pension from 62 to 64.

The government has said the change is necessary to deal with a funding deficit, and French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne described it as “not negotiable.” France spends almost 14 percent of its GDP on state pensions, and raising the retirement age to 64 would keep France below the European norm. But living costs are rising, and even if workers do not object to a change in pension plans in theory, they strongly object to this one.

• Europe Doesn’t Need the United States Anymore by Rajan Menon and Daniel R. DePetris

• South Korea Could Sweep Up Europe’s Tank Market by Blake Herzinger

• Iran’s Regime Plays With Fire in Baluchistan by Alex Vatanka

For the birds. A British bird charity—the British Trust for Ornithology, based in Norfolk—was locked out of its Twitter account for several days after posting about the “woodcock.” The group said it was “all a bit of a mystery.” Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted of the ban, “Most ironic thing I’ve read in a while. How much wood could a woodcock …”