2023-08-18 10:43:29
The United States has approved sending F-16 fighters to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands once the training led by both countries has been completed, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said in a letter seen by the Reuters news agency.
Having got the tanks, kyiv wants fighter planes: are they useful in this war?
Further
Washington will expedite the requests for the transfer of the fighters, according to the letter sent to their counterparts in both countries. “I am writing to express the full support of the United States for both the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and the training of Ukrainian pilots by qualified instructors,” Blinken said in the letter. “It remains critical that Ukraine can defend itself against the ongoing Russian aggression and violation of its sovereignty.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Wopke Hoekstra, has thanked the decision in Twitter: “We welcome Washington’s decision to pave the way for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Many thanks to Antony Blinken for the good and fast cooperation. Now, we will continue to discuss the issue with our European partners.”
The news comes shortly after the Ukrainian authorities admitted that they did not expect to receive the long-awaited US-made fighters this year, which kyiv has been requesting for some time.
delays
In a message collected by the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform, the spokesman for the air forces, Yuriy Ignat, said that “it is clear that Ukraine will not receive the F-16s necessary for defense in the autumn or winter,” adding that the Ukrainian pilots they are prepared to receive the instruction and that he hopes there will be no “delays” in that process.
In July, the Danish Defense Minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, assured that the coalition of 11 allied countries that will participate in the training of Ukrainian pilots to handle the F-16s would begin their military training in August. The Netherlands, for its part, confirmed that the training center will be installed in Romania.
According to CNN, however, the United States has not yet received a formal training plan, which Washington needs to approve the shipment of classified training material.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian counter-offensive against Kremlin forces continues, which is so far not achieving the kind of front-line victories many had hoped for. In fact, The Washington Post newspaper published this Thursday an information about a classified intelligence report that predicts that Kiev will not achieve its main objective of reaching the city of Melitopol, in the southeast of the country, so that Ukraine would not be able to cut off access to Crimea from the Russians.
Biden initially opposed sending F-16 fighters to Ukraine, but Washington’s military shipments have included increasingly heavy-duty weaponry as the conflict seems to become more and more entrenched.
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