Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced over the weekend that his country has received, and begun using, Western-provided F-16 fighter jets.
Zelensky’s announcement is the culmination of “hundreds of meetings and negotiations to strengthen the capabilities of our aviation and air defense,” he said while speaking at an air base outside of Kyiv, according to CNN.
Ukrainian leaders have desperately pushed NATO countries, which have provided them in total billions of dollars of aid, to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s and to provide them to Ukraine so they can better protect Ukrainian airspace from Russian attacks and aircraft.
“We are now in a new phase of development for the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Zelensky said on X. “We have done a lot to transition the Ukrainian Air Force to a new aviation standard — Western combat aviation. From the beginning of this war, we have been talking with our partners about the need to close the Ukrainian sky from Russian missiles and aircraft.”
“We have made possible what was our ambition, our defense need, and now the F-16s are a reality, a reality in our skies,” he added.
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Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have committed to providing Ukraine with more than 60 F-16s over the coming months. Zelensky did not say this weekend how many Ukraine has received or from whom it received them.
During last month’s NATO summit, Zelensky said his country needs about 125 F-16s to match up against Russia’s fleet of 300 jets adequately.