The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, when asked which countries he had in mind when he claimed that training for Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 planes had already begun, mentioned Poland, which was news to the country’s Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak.
Borrell, who heads the EU’s diplomatic efforts, said before the beginning of a meeting with EU member state defense ministers that Poland had already commenced its planned training for Ukrainian pilots to handle F-16 fighter jets.
That revelation was contradicted by Błaszczak, who clarified that the training on F-16s has not yet begun. “We are ready to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s, but the training has not started,” he told the meeting, adding that he had “proposed that the training of Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s should be counted as part of the EU mission being carried out in Poland.”
The U.S., during the G7 summit in Hiroshima last week, approved training on F-16s and was backed by the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday told journalists that the training of Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s does not make NATO a part of the conflict, as it is merely assisting Ukraine with the right of self-defense.
It is not clear at this stage exactly how many F-16 planes will be transferred to Ukraine.
Marcin Przydacz, the Polish president’s chief foreign policy aide, told the media that Poland is unlikely to be making any F-16s available in the immediate future, as the planes are being used to patrol Poland’s air space and Poland has already supplied more military hardware to Ukraine than most other nations.
