F-16 training should have started in June - Kuleba

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that "one of the countries" promised Ukraine to start training Ukrainians on F-16 fighter jets last month, but due to a miscalculation, this did not happen.

The minister made this statement during a telethon on Monday, a correspondent of Yevropeiska Pravda reports.

Kuleba admitted that he had previously been confident that Ukraine would receive the fighters "in the first months of next year" given that training on the F-16 was supposed to begin in June.

"The training did not start in June. This means that the schedule is beginning to shift... We are now working with all parties involved, with all countries participating in the aviation coalition, to speed up this process as much as possible," he said.

The Foreign Minister explained that it is a very complicated process: training pilots and engineers, preparing the infrastructure, making the necessary legal decisions, and actually transferring the aircraft.

Author - Olena Madiak, 03/07/2023