Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that his forces finally received F-16 fighter jets promised to the former Soviet republic by US-led Western countries.
Zelensky said on Sunday that Kiev forces had received the first batch of F-16 fighter jets. It took more than two years of intense lobbying by the Ukrainian leader to acquire the American-made jets.
“F-16s are in Ukraine. We did it,” Zelensky said in a video posted on social media networks on Sunday showing him at an air base. And, he claimed that the Ukrainian pilots “have already started using them.”
“We often heard the words that this is impossible,” Zelensky said. “But we have made possible what was our ambition, our defense need.”
“Now it is a reality,” he said, adding, “Reality is in our skies.”
Zelensky reportedly stood before two F-16s at the airbase as two more warplanes flew overhead.
Earlier this year, Western officials had said that by summer as few as six jets might have arrived in Ukraine.
US officials say some 20 Ukrainian pilots will be trained this year to fly the jets.
The F-16 fighter jets would be “ready to fly by the end of the summer,” White House national security spokesman John F. Kirby told the Ukrainian edition of Voice of America last week, adding, “There’s no reason to doubt that.”