Alexey Reznikov also recalled that at first Germany did not want to transfer the main battle tanks to UkraineBERLIN, March 3.
/tass/. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov said that sooner or later Western countries will still supply Kiev with fighter jets.
"I think it will again be a kind of coalition [for the supply of fighters], we will have the main aircraft and other types," Reznikov said in an interview with Bild newspaper on Friday. "I am sure that we will have two or three types of fighters, there will be one "main bird". And it will depend on which of them [fighters] will be the best for Ukraine. For our airfields, for our engineers, for maintenance," the Ukrainian minister continued.
Commenting on the position of the German authorities, which is that Germany is not considering the issue of supplying fighters to Ukraine, Reznikov recalled that at first Berlin did not want to transfer the main battle tanks to Kiev. "Now there are Leopard [tanks] in my country, I personally tested Leopard from Germany," stated the head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, adding that among the tanks supplied by the West to Kiev, Leopard became the main ones. "But we also have [British] Challenger, [American] Abrams, light tanks from France. But the main battle tank is Leopard," he concluded.
On January 31, US President Joe Biden said that Washington would not transfer F-16 fighter jets to Kiev. Later, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that Ukraine was invited to begin training in the UK marines and fighter pilots in service with NATO. However, later the representative of Sunak clarified that the government had not made a decision on the transfer of fighters to Ukraine and the issue would be studied from different sides. In turn, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock have repeatedly stated that Germany is not going to supply fighters to Ukraine.
As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stressed, Moscow perceives the supply of weapons by the West to the Ukrainian armed forces as the growing involvement of Western countries in the conflict in Ukraine.
