Belgium will transfer three F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine by the end of the year, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday. He said the two countries had agreed to speed up delivery. “There is an important agreement with Belgium on the transfer of three F-16 fighter jets by the end of this year,” he wrote on X.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine had already received urgent F-16 ammunition deliveries from Belgium and Spain, among other countries. In his nightly video address, he added that Ukraine had received a package the previous day that included a NASAMS air-defence system, jointly developed by the United States and Norway.
The Ukrainian president thanked Washington and Oslo and said talks were continuing to secure missiles for the Patriot air-defence system. He described those missiles as critical to intercepting Russian ballistic missiles.
Zelenskiy also said tests were continuing to improve Ukrainian interceptors against jet-powered drones, which fly higher and faster than conventional drones. Of more than 100 Russian drones deployed on Tuesday, 29 were jet-powered and 18 of those had been downed, he said.