Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba predicts the appearance of the first F-16 fighters in Ukraine by the end of the first quarter of 2024 (by April). Kuleba said this in an interview with Radio Liberty, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
"I think that if by the end of the first quarter of next year, the first F-16s fly in Ukrainian air, controlled by Ukrainian pilots, then it will be according to the schedule," he said.
He also noted that the training of Ukrainian pilots should begin in August, perhaps at the beginning of September, and the preparation of legal decisions necessary for the transfer of aircraft will proceed in parallel.
Kuleba emphasized that it is necessary to train engineers, technicians, infrastructure. He called the transfer of the F-16 very difficult technically and suggested that the schedule for the transfer of the aircraft could shift.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, on start of training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in August.
It also became known that a coalition of 11 countries will begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in August at a training center in Denmark.
On July 11, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov announced that Ukraine and 11 countries signed a memorandum on the creation of a coalition to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 multipurpose fighters. In particular, the memorandum was signed by: Great Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Sweden.
Earlier, Kuleba told about the shift in the training schedule of Ukrainian pilots. According to him, the training was supposed to start in June.
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