Will U.S. send Ukraine F-16 fighter jets? NATO ambassador says not 'right now'

The United States' ambassador to NATO says it is "entirely" up to other countries to decide whether they want to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, but it's not something the Americans have plans to do "right now."

Amid news that the U.S. will be supporting an international effort to train Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, the United States' ambassador to NATO says the U.S. "right now" has no plans to provide Ukraine with jets.

In an interview with CTV's Question Period host Vassy Kapelos airing on Sunday, Julianne Smith said that while U.S. President Joe Biden has "been pretty clear" that at the moment the U.S. is not in a position to send F-16s, "each country can take its own sovereign decision on the assistance that it wants to provide."

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"Should a country want to provide jets of any kind… That's their own decision," Smith said. "We've taken our own sovereign decision, and if another country does desire to send F-16s, that is entirely up to them."

The newly-announced F-16 training coalition, and the U.S. giving the go-ahead to other interested nations such as the United Kingdom and Netherlands to export some of their fighter jet fleets, is being viewed as setting the stage for additional allied countries to send jets to Ukraine.

According to The Associated Press, Biden told his fellow leaders at the G7 that decisions on how many jets, when they will be sent, and from whom, will be decided in the months ahead, as the training gets underway in Europe the coming weeks.

Asked whether the U.S. position on sending jets from its own supply is immovable, Smith said it was "an evolving conversation," that could be revisited "down the road" but that the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Defense has said "right now, F-16s are not on the list."

"Look, the process in terms of what the United States has given the Ukrainians has evolved tremendously over the last 15 months," Smith said. "We meet every month in what's called the Ramstein Group. We sit down [with] over 50 countries. Canada is a part of that, with our friends in Ukraine, the military commanders, and we listen to what their requirements are, and we do our very best in that U.S.-led process to get what they need in real-time so that they can prevail on the battlefield."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been calling on western countries to supply Ukraine with fighter jets to build on Ukraine's defences, after allied countries including Canada supplied the embattled nation with air-defence systems.

Zelenskyy, who is attending the G7 Summit this weekend, welcomed the fighter jet training coalition news, calling it an "historic decision" in a tweet.

"This will greatly enhance our army in the sky," he said, adding that he plans to discuss the "practical implementation" of the move, with his allies when he arrives in Hiroshima.