Estonia supports the provision of F-16 fighters to Ukraine
Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Urmas Reinsalu, believes that Ukraine's Western allies should be more proactive in providing Ukraine with weapons, particularly fighter jets, in order to guarantee its victory as soon as possible.
European Pravda has reported that Reinsalu said this in an interview with the media outlet RBC-Ukraine.
"With regard to the F-16s, pilots are pilots: we're not talking spaceships here. And you have aircraft pilots, they will be trained in a short period of time. And what is very important is that these F-16s can also be an air defence platform, because their speed can also be used to launch missiles against Russian S-300s," he said.
According to Reinsalu, this specific type of weaponry could give Ukraine the advantage at a certain point on the battlefield, but from a strategic perspective, the West needs to make a bigger "investment in Ukrainian victory".
"The question is whether this step-by-step philosophy of military support is reasonable from the point of view of cost-effectiveness. The material effect of spending is one thing, but there is also the effect of spending for the sake of humanity, because this will just prolong the war," the minister explained.
"Continuing this approach of step-by-step support for Ukraine would mean huge human sacrifices for the Ukrainian people, because Putin's strategy may actually be to invest from his side to keep the war going," he added.
Ukraine is known to be keen to receive F-16 fighters from its Western allies, as they are used by a large number of states and technical maintenance will be easier. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has not ruled out the possibility that the allies will decide to take this step.
However, so far Kyiv has received only Soviet aircraft from the allies. On 17 March, the Slovak government decided to send 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, and the day before, Poland announced that it would supply four MiG-29s to Ukraine in the coming days.
Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!
