The White House said there was a shortage of AFU pilots to train on F-16 fighter jets

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) does not have enough pilots to train on US F-16 fighter jets. This was reported at the forum on national defense in the state of California, the White House national security adviser to the head of the White House Jake Sullivan.

"We had a limited number of trained pilots not because we were not ready to train them <...> but because the Ukrainians do not have the pilots to create full F-16 capabilities in a timely manner," he said at the conference, broadcast on the YouTube channel of the Ronald Reagan Institute.

Prior to that, on August 27, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (his term expired on May 20) first announced the Ukrainian military's use of F-16s transferred to Kiev - allegedly to repel drone and missile strikes. One of the fighter jets soon crashed and its pilot was killed.

In the first half of July, Denmark and the Netherlands began transferring F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. The arrival of the first planes in the country was reported at the end of the same month. According to The Economist, the Ukrainian army received 10 fighter jets.

Experts have repeatedly noted that the use of F-16s will not change the situation on the battlefield for the Ukrainian troops. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that these fighter jets would be destroyed and would not affect the dynamics of the situation on the front.

Western countries have stepped up military and financial support for Kiev against the background of Russia's special operation to protect Donbass, which was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, after the situation in the region worsened due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.