F-16 Fighting Falcon. AFP file photo
New Delhi: Netherlands may provide Ukraine with the Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets should the war-torn country ask, the Dutch Foreign Minister said Thursday.Minister of Foreign Affairs Wopke Hoekstra, during a parliamentary debate, said that the Cabinet will look into supplying F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine if the Kyiv government asks for it.The Cabinet, the minister informed the Parliament, would look at such request with an “open mind”.
The comments came in as Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch Parliamentarian asked the government supply F16s and infantry fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian armed force.Ukraine has long sought the American made fighter jet to fight back the numerically and technologically superior Russian Air Force.But the US defence officials have said that Ukraine will have to wait before it can switch from the Soviet aircrafts it uses to US made systems.
“That doesn’t happen fast. At the end of the day, we’ve got to leverage what they have and offer them some other unique capabilities to make the problem challenging, and then there’s the longer-term view. Clearly, they want to migrate from Russian capabilities to U.S., but that takes some time”, US Air Forces General in Europe commander Gen Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine in April 2022
Meanwhile, Netherlands’ Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren, at the Davos World Econmic Summit, said that her country was ready to pay for the German Leopard 2 tanks that other countries send to Ukraine.
Netherlands has 18 of the German-made Leopard 2 tanks. But, it can’t send those tanks to Ukraine, like Poland and Finland, unless German agrees to the export.Germany holds a veto power over the export of the tanks, considered the best suited for Ukraine by experts.
On Wednesday German officials had said they would send the Leopards to Ukraine as soon as US ships its Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
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