The first fighter jets will arrive in the coming month, Mette Frederiksen has said
The first US-made F-16 fighter jets will arrive in Ukraine “in the coming month,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday. The batch will include five aircraft, she announced at a joint press conference with the leaders of other Nordic nations and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Stockholm.
Copenhagen is a member of the coalition of Kiev’s Western backers that promised to procure US-designed F-16s for Ukraine and train its pilots last year. Denmark vowed to provide 19 jets of this type out of a total of some 40 aircraft pledged by the coalition. Another 24 should come from the Netherlands.
“The first five planes from Denmark will be in the air in the coming month from now,” Frederiksen said, answering a question about speeding up deliveries of Western arms and ammunition that could prevent Kiev from losing the conflict. The Danish prime minister also repeatedly called on Western nations to “donate” ammunition and air defense systems to Ukraine.
“[Ukrainians] are fighting at the moment and it is not going into the right direction,” she said, referring to the ongoing Russian advance in the Donbass and Kharkov Region. “The main reason for the losses on the Ukrainian side is the lack of air defenses,” she claimed.
Frederiksen called the Ukraine conflict the “top priority” of the EU and NATO and accused Moscow of launching “hybrid attacks and operations on the NATO soil,” which she called “extremely concerning.”
In March, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said that Denmark would be the first nation to deliver the F-16s and would do it at some point this summer. The Netherlands was to follow suit and provide Ukraine with their batch of fighter jets “in the second half of the year,” the minister said at that time. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Ilya Evlash stated that Kiev could get the jets as early as “after Easter,” which was on May 5.
Kiev has long sought to acquire the US-made jets, touting them as a means to greatly improve both its defensive and offensive capabilities. Some senior Ukrainian military officials believe that it might be too late for such deliveries, however. The jets may no longer be relevant since Russia has already developed countermeasures against them, Politico reported last month, citing high-ranking Ukrainian military sources.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that continued Western arms supplies to Kiev would only prolong the conflict but would not change its ultimate outcome.
