UK offers assistance to countries ready to supply fighter jets to Ukraine – British Defence Minister

Britain can support the Ukrainian military by assisting other countries wishing to supply fighter jets and other military equipment to Ukraine.

Source: This was announced on Wednesday, 17 May by Ben Wallace, British Defence Minister, reports European Pravda with reference to The Guardian.

Quote: "What we can, obviously contribute, is training and support, again, within limits, because we don’t have F16 pilots," Ben Wallace said at a press conference in Berlin with his German counterpart, when asked about international plans to send the jets to Ukraine.

"We can do what we’ve done throughout this … which is we can enable other people who wish to," he added. 

"Any nation that comes to us and says we want to get tanks into Ukraine … we will help with that process," Wallace said.

Meanwhile, the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, told reporters Germany did not have the training capacity or military equipment to actively contribute to a British-Dutch initiative to supply Ukraine with fighter jets.

"We cannot play an active role in such an alliance, in such a coalition, because we have neither the training capacities, the competencies or the planes," Pistorius said.

On 17 May, following a meeting on the sidelines of the Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik, the Prime Ministers of the UK and the Netherlands,  agreed to lead a "jet coalition" to provide Ukraine with the F-16s.

In an evening address on Tuesday 16 May, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the UK and the Netherlands, as well as France, had joined the so-called "fighter jet coalition". 

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