Will long-awaited F-16 fighter jets boost Ukraine’s push against Russia?
Al Jazeera
Kyiv’s forces are due to receive the aircraft within weeks, but analysts say they are unlikely to be a game-changer.
Kyiv, Ukraine – The first US-made F-16 fighter jets have yet to appear in the sky over Ukraine, but there’s already a bounty on them.
Fores, a Russian company that produces equipment for oil drilling, said that it would pay 15 million rubles, or about $170,000, to the first Russian pilot who shoots down an F-16.
Russia will also rain supersonic ballistic missiles to destroy the F-16s on Ukrainian soil. Kyiv already plans to station some of them in other Eastern European nations such as Poland.
“Understandably, they will be hunted down,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, ex-deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces, told Al Jazeera. “But we will serve them, hide them, equip and use them.”
The first dozen of F-16s are expected to arrive in Ukraine within weeks as their pilots complete their training.
