Netherlands and Denmark to give dozens of F-16 fighter jets to Kyiv – live

Ukraine is set to receive dozens of F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands and Denmark in a sign of “unwavering support” once the pilot training of Ukrainian troops has been satisfactorily completed, their respective leaders announced.

Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will get 42 jets, but the Netherlands and Denmark, in a joint statement announcing the deliveries, did not specify numbers.

Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen said 19 jets will “hopefully” be sent to Kyiv, of which six will arrive around the new year, eight more next year and the remaining five will be sent in 2025 as he asked Ukraine to “please take this donation as a token of Denmark’s unwavering support for your country’s fight for freedom”.

Danish defence minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen said Denmark’s support for Ukraine is unwavering and with the donation of F-16s, the country is now leading the way.

“It makes me proud that Denmark, together with the Netherlands, will donate F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine‘s fight for freedom against Russia and its senseless aggression,” he said in a statement.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said the Netherlands has 42 of the jets, but said some will be needed for training purposes.

The timeline of dispatching these to Kyiv will depend on how soon Ukrainian crews and infrastructure are ready for the powerful US-made jets.

Mr Zelensky welcomed the ‘’historic” announcement and praised Mr Rutte for making the Netherlands the first country to offer the planes. The announcement came minutes after the two leaders inspected two grey F-16 jets parked in a hangar at a Dutch base in the southern city of Eindhoven.

Russia is expanding and reorganising its military structures to cope with its losses in key fighting hotspots, according to the UK’s MoD.

“One new formation is highly likely – the 18th Combined Arms Army (18 CAA). The formation is likely to be an amalgamation and uplift of other units currently operating in Kherson Oblast, including 22nd Army Corps, the force which usually constitutes Russia’s garrison in occupied Crimea,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

It added that the 18 CAA is “likely to consist mostly of mobilised personnel and to focus on defensive security operations in the south of Ukraine”.

Russia likely aims to free up more experienced units to fight on key axes, the MoD said.

“There is a realistic possibility that this has led to the recent re-deployment of airborne forces from Kherson to the heavily contested Orikhiv sector,” it added.

Moscow’s Domodedovo airport has restricted arrivals and departures shortly after a Ukrainian drone was jammed and crashed over the capital region, Russian news agencies said.

The step was taken “in order to ensure additional flight safety measures”, TASS and RIA said, citing the airport’s press service.

Arrivals and departures from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport were suspended in the morning.

A Ukrainian drone was jammed over the Moscow region causing it to crash, Russia’s defence ministry said today.

There were no casualties, the ministry added. Officials suspended arrivals and departures from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport shortly after, local news agencies reported.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov announced F-16 training had begun for Ukrainian pilots, but added that it would take at least six months and possibly longer to also train engineers and mechanics.

After delivering a big boost for Kyiv with the announcement of the planned delivery of dozens of F-16s, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen said more than 70 Ukrainian military officials had arrived in Denmark for training. Officials from a coalition of 11 nations have said training will take place in Denmark and Romania.

The Netherlands and Denmark have led a months-long push to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s and to ultimately deliver the jets to help counter the air superiority of Russia, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February last year.

While Ukraine has said it expects several dozen pilots to be trained, it remains unclear how many pilots had arrived in Denmark.
Both the Netherlands and Denmark have F-16s available to donate as their armed forces are transitioning to newer F-35 fighters.

Russia reported an “abnormal situation” Saturday on its moon-bound Luna-25 spacecraft, which launched earlier this month.

The country’s space agency, Roscosmos, said the spacecraft ran into unspecified trouble while trying to enter a pre-landing orbit, and that its specialists were analyzing the situation.

“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post.

Roscosmos did not specify whether the incident will prevent Luna-25 from making a landing.

Ukrainian soldiers who served on the frontline have described some of the desperate measures used by Russia.

A deputy battalion commander of 129th Territorial Defense Brigade told The New York Times: “The Russians attempted counterattacks, tried to squeeze us out, to encircle us but everything happened as we envisioned.

“They buried quite a lot of their own guys.”

Russia is said to have resorted to firing rockets at the battlefield indiscriminately, killing many of their own soldiers.

As President Joe Biden likes to remind anyone who’ll listen, “This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party”.

John McCain, the late Arizona Senator and 2008 GOP presidential candidate, sounded the alarm about Russia for years, making him one of President Vladimir Putin’s “greatest antagonists,” the Arizona Republic noted in February 2022, days after the Russian invasion began.

During the last year of his presidency in 2008, George W Bush said he “strongly supported” eventual Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Last year, in a viral gaffe, he mistakenly said Iraq when he meant to call the war in Ukraine “unjustified and brutal”.

His younger brother, Jeb Bush, a former Florida Governor, went to Europe in 2015 shortly before announcing his presidential campaign.

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Ukraine’s counteroffensive isn’t progressing as well as many had hoped, US officials have warned.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, told the Financial Times: “It’s been about 10km of advance at most no matter where you look in this offensive.”

Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, said: “I don’t think that you’ll hear an argument from anyone that this is going well right now or that this is heading to a place that people would view as good, but there is not much by way of plan B.”