CIA Director: Putin Too Confident

(continued from Page 3) White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. was providing Ukraine with the military aid needed to retake territory seized by Russia. The domestic politics of support for Ukraine are also complicated by some GOP members of Congress who say the administration should pull back and focus more on the needs at home. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said planes and long-range artillery could help end the war on a faster timeline. “This whole thing is taking too long,” McCaul said. “And it really didn’t have to happen this way,” said McCaul, R-Texas. Ukraine won support last month from Baltic nations and Poland in its quest to obtain Western fighter jets, but there have been no signs that nations such as the U.S. and Britain will change their stance of refusing to provide warplanes to Kyiv.

Biden said in an ABC News interview on Friday that he’s “ruling it out for now,” saying that they are not the weaponry that Ukrainians need in the near term.

But Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the White House has been slow in providing what Ukraine seeks, including jets. “That has been a pattern with this administration from the beginning, where they have slow-rolled critical military weapons systems,” he said. Jake Sullivan said the U.S. is already providing parts to keep Ukraine’s fleet of Soviet-era jets flying, but supplying F-16s “is really a question for another day, for another phase” of the war.

Jake Sullivan appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.” McCaul was on ABC and Dan Sullivan was on NBC.