Pentagon shoots down Ukrainian pleas for no-fly zone: ‘will make conflict worse’

Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby shoots down Ukrainian pleas for a no-fly zone, saying it would only make the conflict worse and turn it into a war between the US and Russia.

“The thing about a no-fly zone is it has to be enforced,” Kirby tells CNN. That escalates this conflict to a level President [Joe] Biden is not willing to do.”

“It’s not going to make things better or easier in Ukraine,” he says. “This should not become a war between the United States and Russia.”

He makes the comments in response to a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asking how many dead bodies and severed limbs it will take for the West to impose a no-fly zone.

Kirby mostly avoids answering a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer regarding Ukrainian requests for Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile batteries, repeating again that the US does not want the conflict to escalate. Israel has refused to ship weapons to Ukraine, citing a need to remain balanced.

He says the Russians are under pressure, without food or fuel, and have been “flummoxed, they have been frustrated” by the Ukrainian resistance.

“They still have not made appreciable progress. They have not made the progress that we expected them to make by this point in the war,” he says.

But he notes that the US now believes the city of Kherson is under Russian control, citing local reports, and says officials think a stalled column of Russian military vehicles outside of Kyiv will eventually surround the city and attack it.