Moscow announced its response if NATO allowed Kiev to use this military alliance’s air base.
According to Konstantin Gavrilov – head of the Russian delegation at talks in Vienna on military security and arms control, Russia will use countermeasures if Kiev uses NATO air bases to sorties aircraft produced by the West and handed over to Ukraine.
“We have heard comments that, in the context of the destruction of Ukraine’s runway infrastructure, the F-16s delivered to Ukraine could perform their missions from air bases in Ba Lan, Romania and Slovakia,” Mr. Konstantin Gavrilov said during the OSCE Forum meeting on security cooperation.
The Russian diplomat stated that Moscow will consider this as the participation of these countries in the conflict and will force Russia to use “response measures”.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu previously said that the country’s air defense only needed 20 days to take down all of the F-16 fighters that the West pledged to transfer to Ukraine.
Mr. Shoigu made his comments in the context of a number of countries starting to train F-16 pilots for Ukraine after many months of the country calling for aid for modern US-made fighters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the F-16 fighter “will strengthen Ukraine’s air defense capabilities”, supporting them in the counterattack campaign to repel Kiev’s Russian forces.
Denmark committed to delivering 19 F-16 fighters to Ukraine, the first batch of 6 will be delivered this year, the next 8 in 2024 and 5 in 2025.
Last month, the Dutch Ministry of Defense announced that the first batch of five F-16 fighter jets had arrived at the European F-16 Training Center (EFTC) in Borcea, Romania for the purpose of training Ukrainian pilots. This is considered part of Western efforts to strengthen Kiev’s defense capabilities.
Besides the Netherlands and Denmark, many other countries also promised to provide F-16 aid to Ukraine, but have not stated the delivery schedule.
In early June, Ukraine launched a large-scale counterattack campaign and the country repeatedly announced partial success and regained control of some residential areas. However, Ukrainian officials admitted that the campaign did not go according to plan.