Volodymyr Zelenskiy tours a hanger containing F-16 fighter jets at an airbase near Eindhoven, Netherlands on Aug. 20. Photographer: Ksenia Kuleshova/Bloomberg A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s defense ministry Diana Davityan declined to comment.
It took more than a year to get here. President Joe Biden dropped his opposition to sending F-16s to Ukraine in May 2023, after repeated pleas by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and NATO allies to allow their transfer.
That came alongside intense debate as to whether F-16s would give Ukraine any decisive advantage. Veteran pilots told Bloomberg last May that the jets wouldn’t be the game changer Ukraine claims.
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The move has been bedeviled by delays, questions around spare parts, and a language barrier between Ukrainian pilots and their foreign trainers. Planners have also worried that the country doesn’t have enough runways — and those it does have are vulnerable to Russian attacks.
So far, Ukrainian pilots have trained with F-16s abroad including in the US. In the meantime, the battlefield has changed, with both sides increasingly relying on cheap drones and Russia bolstering its air defenses.
Even if small at first, the transfer of jets should over time help Kyiv build the capacity to put a dent in Russia’s aerial superiority, which has allowed the Kremlin to decimate the country’s power infrastructure, leading to rolling blackouts.