F-16 fighter jets are expected to be on the battlefield in Ukraine by this summer, a Dutch air force commander has said.
Gen Arnoud Stallmann, speaking in front of two disused F-16s in a military hangar in the Netherlands, said that after a series of delays, everything was “lining up” to see the US-made jets in Kyiv’s hands by this summer.
The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway have pledged around 80 F-16s to Ukraine between them. Kyiv has long called for the fighter jets, seeing them as vital to countering threats such as Russia’s recent use of deadly glide bombs, capable of levelling whole buildings.
It comes as Russian leader Vladimir Putin has arrived in Vietnam on the second-leg of his overseas tour, having visited North Korea yesterday.
Putin is scheduled to meet Vietnam’s most powerful politician, the communist party’s general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the new president To Lam and other officials, in the capital of Hanoi later today.
The Russian president’s last visit to Vietnam was in 2017. The pair have had diplomatic relations since 1950.