“If earlier I was sure that literally in the first months of next year Ukraine would receive aircraft, then I proceeded from the fact that training would begin in June, as we were promised. In June, training did not start, which means that the schedule is starting to shift,” – he said.
According to Kuleba, Ukraine is now working with all parties involved, with all countries that participate in the aviation coalition, in order to speed up this process as much as possible.
“In fact, here we are talking about training pilots, training engineers, preparing infrastructure, making legal decisions that are necessary for the transfer of aircraft. Very serious work, it should have started “yesterday”, but “it didn’t happen like it was guessing” “We are actively working to get the process back on track. I do not think that there is a political decision to slow down the process. The process itself is very complex, it requires the coordination of many elements, and above all, it requires our intervention,” Kuleba added.
According to him, the country that promised to start training pilots in June continues to train. “They made a mistake in their calculations, they need more time. But we don’t have time, so we are speeding everything up as much as possible,” the minister said.
Context:
Ukraine is calling on allies to provide it with Western-style combat aircraft, but so far the Allies have only agreed to start training missions for Ukrainian pilots using modern Western aircraft.
According to the Office of the President of Ukraine on June 2, the “European part of the” coalition of fighters “to train Ukrainian pilots included eight countries (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal and France), but “soon there will be more.”
US President Joe Biden has said that the US will support the efforts of allies and partners and will take part in training Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, including the F-16.
Ukraine may receive the F-16 as early as this fall, hinted at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
The agency assumes that the first country to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine will be the Netherlands (the state recently canceled a deal to sell F-16s to a private American company, Draken International). On May 9, the country’s Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated that his government admits the possibility of transferring F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Denmark is also ready to transfer the F-16 to Ukraine, subject to US approval.
The process of training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets was led by Denmark and the Netherlands, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced on June 15.
According to the head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Oleksiy Reznikov, a program of exercises for pilots, engineers and technicians should be prepared and approved for the Vilnius NATO summit in July.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian pilots could start training on the F-16 in August.
On July 1, Zelensky said there were no schedules for training missions for Ukrainian F-16 pilots yet.
2023-07-03 20:34:35
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