Why Zelensky appears to be backing off a no-fly zone

There are plenty of good reasons Zelensky has backed off the request. For one, it was just unrealistic.

“After asking for it for so long, he recognized that it was just not going to be something NATO would agree to,” Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told The Daily Beast. “Because it would have required NATO to not only shoot down Russian planes but to conduct airstrikes against Russian air defense sites in Belarus or Russia proper.”

For another, a no-fly zone wouldn’t end Russian destruction in Ukraine.

“The damage being done is not from airplanes; it’s from missiles and artillery, which a no-fly zone would not affect,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Daily Beast. “So the benefit would be very limited.”