Primarily, Litovkin told the Russian newspaper, he believed that the Ukrainian spring offensive would fail because the Ukrainian ground forces could not receive sufficient support from the Ukrainian Air Force, because they did not have enough aircraft.
Now the so-called counterattack begins, but they have no planes, so they cannot cover their tanks and artillery. All these vehicles will be destroyed.”
Litovkin said.
He also touched on the possibility that he believes Ukraine will get F-16 fighter jets, but he thinks Ukraine always gets less Western equipment than it needs, so that will happen now.
He added: In his opinion, it makes no sense to give Ukraine the F-16s anyway, because Pilot training is 1 year, and retraining for LV is 3 months. Therefore, these machines will not be able to participate in the Spring Offensive.
They need factories that make parts, factories that clean kerosene and many other things that are necessary for the F-16s to be able to take off from Ukrainian airports. There are no such airports in Ukraine in the first place, they are all destroyed.”
– said the retired colonel to the Russian newspaper.
It is important to emphasize: Obviously, Lytovkin speaks biasedly, because he spoke to a Russian newspaper as a Russian expert, but his statements certainly contain partial facts. It is really hard that the Ukrainians did not receive a sufficient amount of air assets for the spring offensive (only the old, Slovak and Polish MiG-29s), and the United States has repeatedly justified this by not sending the F-16s to Ukraine, and that the country does not have the necessary infrastructure for effective operation For American fighter aircraft of the fourth generation.
