French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Paris is not going to supply French Dassault Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Ukraine.
According to Emmanuel Macron, France is not negotiating with Kiev on the delivery of French fighter jets to Ukraine. At the same time, the head of the Fifth Republic said that Paris was training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.
“As of today, we are not negotiating Mirages, but we are engaged in training pilots. Among the eight existing coalitions, to which a ninth coalition on long-range weapons was added today, there is a coalition on aviation, on F-16 fighters. We don’t have F-16s as we have our own aircraft. We are studying our own capabilities on the question of whether it will be useful for the defence of Ukraine,” – said Emmanuel Macron at a press conference after the meeting on support for Ukraine in Paris.
We shall remind you that earlier, senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Mark Kansian mentioned that each hour of flight time on the US-made F-16 aircraft would cost Ukraine 27,000 dollars and 16 hours of maintenance.