Volker: Ukraine should immediately receive ATACMS, F-16 jets, A-10 attack aircraft

Kurt Volker, U.S. Ambassador to NATO in 2008-2009 and former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, said this in an interview with Ukrinform.

"They [Ukrainian forces] have received enough to be able to have a successful counteroffensive. This is in terms of the artillery, the precision-guided munitions, armor such as fighting vehicles, tanks, etc. Air defense is critically important," the diplomat said.

However, in his opinion, this does not mean that the United States has done everything it could. In particular, Volker believes that it is necessary to provide Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, cluster munitions, as well as F-16 fighter jets and A-10 attack aircraft.

"It's a shame that we have held back in what we've been giving Ukraine because of this sense that we don't want to provoke Russia, we don't want to lead to a nuclear escalation and so forth," Volker said.

Commenting on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, he noted that everything "is going very carefully and going reasonably well so far." The former ambassador said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are conserving their forces as much as possible and rather deliberately probing to see how the Russians respond to different lines of attack.