Ukraine gets first F-16 fighter jets to bolster defense against Russia, U.S. official says
Ukraine received the first F-16 fighter jets it had been seeking for months to combat an onslaught of Russian missile strikes, a U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press.
Ukraine has been pressuring its Western allies for months to supply it with F-16s, saying they are needed to counter Russian missile attacks against it. The F-16 is specialized in suppressing enemy air defenses. The West has been reluctant to provide the planes, fearing that arming Ukraine with advanced weapons would further escalate the war with Russia.
The United States has also trained Ukrainian pilots to fly these aircraft and has already graduated the first group of pilots from their operation.
During his visit to Washington earlier this month for the NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged NATO allies to remove all limitations on how Western-supplied weapons are being used, including allowing Ukraine to fire Western-supplied weapons against a broader range of Russian targets.
It is not clear how many aircraft were delivered in the first tranche, nor which countries supplied them. The Ukrainian government has not confirmed receipt of the aircraft.
US President Joe Biden has authorized the shipment of US-made warplanes to Ukraine in August 2023. This came after months of pressure from kyiv and internal debate within the U.S. administration, where officials feared the move would escalate tensions with the Kremlin.
Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, all NATO members, have pledged to provide Ukraine with more than 60 aircraft. That number is dwarfed by Russia’s fleet of jet fighters, which is estimated to be about ten times larger.
Ukraine at least 130 is required F-16 fighter jets will neutralize Russian air power, Ukrainian officials say. The F-16s can fly at up to twice the speed of sound and have a maximum range of more than 3,200 kilometers.
The jets’ arrival was first reported by Bloomberg.
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Andrew Meldrum in kyiv, Ukraine, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this article.
