The Russian foreign minister warned on Thursday that Russia will regard the presence of F-16 fighter jets in Ukraine as a nuclear threat, probably by the end of the first quarter of 2024.
“We have informed the nuclear powers of the United States, the United Kingdom and France that Russia cannot ignore the ability of these planes to carry nuclear weapons. There are no guarantees that they will help,” Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the Lenta newspaper. ru.
Lavrov warned that in the midst of the war, the Russian military will not determine whether or not all F-16 jets are equipped to carry nuclear weapons.
“The very fact that such systems exist in the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear sphere,” the minister stressed.
On Tuesday, 11 Ukrainian partner countries signed a memorandum defining the conditions for training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighters.
“The F-16s will protect the skies over Ukraine and the eastern flank of NATO. The Ukrainian air force is ready to subdue them as quickly as possible,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksy Reznikov said.
The training, which will last six to eight months, begins in late summer – August or early September – and the first Western F-16 fighter jets are delivered to Kiev by the end of the first quarter of 2024, the foreign minister said. Ukrainian.
Source: TSF
