POLITICSOur country will send two to four F-16 fighter planes to Ukraine before the end of this year. The federal core cabinet decided this today and has been confirmed to our editors. Belgium would initially only send fighter jets from 2025, but the Liberals continued to push for faster delivery. The critical situation on the front line and the pleas of Ukrainian President Zelensky increased the pressure.
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Let’s rewind to October 11, 2023. During his visit to Brussels, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was told that our country is prepared to send F-16s to the front. Although Prime Minister De Croo (Open Vld) and Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder (PS) immediately kept their distance: a concrete date or specific number did not follow. Delivery would only be possible “from 2025”, and the next government in power would then have to give the green light.
But now Vivaldi is stepping up its game and Belgium will deliver “some F-16s” by the end of 2024. The measure is partly at the insistence of the liberal coalition partners Open Vld and MR. They placed the file on the government table again, in response to the deteriorated situation on the Ukrainian front. Zelensky has repeatedly begged his Western allies to send new weapons out of fear of total defeat.
During the federal core cabinet, the Greens were initially not keen on such an accelerated delivery. According to our information, government parties Groen and Ecolo fear that the fighter planes would be deployed incorrectly, for example on Russian territory. The ecologist therefore linked clear conditions to the deployment of the Belgian F-16s: only above Ukrainian airspace, only Ukrainian pilots behind the controls, and only with Ukrainian maintenance personnel on the ground.
Unthinkable
Last year it still seemed “unthinkable” that the Ukrainians would eventually be able to call on our fighter planes. Both Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder (PS) and the Defense Staff themselves expertly kept that door closed. But figures from VRT NWS later showed that our country could indeed supply F-16s, if it wanted to. And so the unthinkable became thinkable. In the meantime, the Vivaldi government discreetly sent Belgian soldiers to Denmark for the training of Ukrainian pilots and technicians. And in our country, Ukrainian technicians are also training in the maintenance of the devices.
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