The Netherlands is about to start preparing the first delivery of US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday 22nd December, following a phone call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
The EU nation is one of Kiev’s backers that pledged to provide it with the warplanes over the next few years, alongside Denmark, Norway, and Belgium.
President Zelensky claimed in August that the Netherlands and Belgium together pledged 42 jets to his country, although a joint statement by the two nations does not mention any specific numbers.
On Friday, Prime Minister Rutte said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the initial delivery would include 18 aircraft.
The prime minister also said earlier that his nation’s entire F-16 fleet consisted of 42 planes and that Amsterdam would need to keep some for its own training purposes.
On Friday, President Zelensky thanked the Dutch prime minister in a post on X for his cabinet’s decision, adding that they also discussed “Ukraine’s current military needs, including artillery, drones, and air defense.”
On the other side, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that the entire fleet of F-16s pledged to Kiev by Western donors could be destroyed in less than three weeks. The task of shooting down all those jets would amount to “roughly 20 days of work,” he said.
I think F-16 jets won’t make any much difference in on going war with Russia. Russia has state of the art multiple Air Defense systems. If f 16 planes failed to achieve goals and suffered heavy losses, that will be great moral loss for all western allied and discouraging for US alone.
