Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday welcomed the arrival of US-made F-16 fighter jets as a “new chapter” for his military, which will start using them against Russia for the first time.
Confirming the jets’ arrival in a ceremony Sunday morning, Zelensky thanked the US, Denmark and Netherlands after the NATO allies delivered the warplanes for a much-needed boost to Ukraine’s aerial defense system.
“F-16s in Ukraine — we did it,” Zelensky crowed in front of the warplanes that he has been requesting for months.
“I am proud of our guys who are mastering these jets and have already started using them for our country,” he said. “Now is a new chapter in the Ukrainian Air Force.”
The F-16s are a significant improvement from the Soviet-era jets that Kyiv has relied on in the past, with the new aircraft equipped with a 20mm cannon and more readily capable of deploying bombs, rockets and missiles. Ukraine’s current jets are heavily outdated and too few, Zelensky has said.
While Zelensky did not specify how many F-16s had arrived, NATO allies pledged to deliver about 80 of them after President Joe Biden approved America’s participation in bolstering Ukraine’s Air Force in May.
The new jets will be flown by the first group of Ukraine fighter pilots who graduated from the European F-16 Training Center in the Netherlands.
But the move’s effectiveness remains to be seen, as the Ukrainian pilots were trained for just a year as opposed to the four years a pilot in Denmark would typically spend training.
Other NATO nations, including the US, have also volunteered to let additional Ukrainian pilots train using F-16s in their country, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Although the arrival of the F-16s will significantly boost Kyiv’s military capabilities, some NATO leaders also fear they will not be enough to turn the tides of war in Ukraine.
“It’s an important addition,” said Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide. “It’s not in itself changing the war.”
