President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said at a meeting with African media journalists that the Armed Forces cannot send enough pilots to train on F-16 fighter jets.
"Training missions have begun. I think they are still minimal. We want to speed it up, we need pilots for this," the president said.
According to him, as the war with Russia continues, pilots are also at war. In order to send them for training, it is necessary to remove them from the frontline.
"This means that you have to take a unit, take part of the pilots and send them to study for a different class of aircraft. Therefore, the military must manage this balance so as not to lose the fleet we have," Zelenskyy added.
The president said that since Russia has an advantage in the sky, so Ukrainian aviation is "at least some kind of deterrent".
Earlier, at a meeting with journalists, the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, said that Ukraine's main task and problem in obtaining F-16 fighter jets is to find the required number of pilots.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that the first F-16s are expected to arrive in the first half of next year. Recently, the Netherlands sent F-16s to Romania to train Ukrainian pilots.