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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Pjotr Sauer at the Volkel military base, Shaun Walker in Kyiv and Dan Sabbagh

‘It is all lining up’: Plan for Ukraine to finally start using F-16 jets this summer

Zelenskiy, Rutte, Ollongren and three air force personnel walk in front of an F-16 fighter jet in an aircraft hangar.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, with the Netherlands’ prime minister, Mark Rutte, and defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren. Ollongren said the Netherlands wanted to deliver F-16s as quickly as possible. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP

At a military base in the rural south of the Netherlands, Gen Arnoud Stallmann, a Dutch air force commander, said he expected that at some point this summer, F-16 fighter jets would finally take to the skies over Ukraine.

“Around this summertime, it is all lining up,” he said, speaking in front of two disused F-16s inside a hangar at the base, where a recent programme to train Ukrainian air force instructors in maintenance for the jets had just come to a close.

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