The recent reported delivery of Western F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not have a significant impact on the battlefield and Kiev must be aware of this, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday.
His statement comes after Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the first batch of US-made jets had arrived in Ukraine. It is not yet clear which country supplied the aircraft, but the outlet noted that the number of warplanes was “small.”
Commenting on the report, Peskov stressed that there is no “magic pill” for Kiev and that it will not have this “panacea” for long.
“These planes will appear, their number will gradually decrease, they will be shot down and destroyed,” the Russian presidential spokesman said. The jets “will not be able to significantly influence the dynamics of events at the front,” Peskov added.
Kiev has yet to confirm or deny the delivery of the jets. The spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Diana Davityan, has declined to comment on the issue altogether.
Previously, a number of NATO states, including the US, France, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden, formed a so-called ‘F-16 coalition’, pledging to provide Kiev with the American-made fighter jets as well as to train Ukrainian pilots to operate the aircraft.
Moscow, however, has repeatedly warned that the jets, like all other Western weapons provided to Kiev, would fail to change the inevitable outcome of the conflict, and that the Russian military would destroy these planes like all other Ukrainian military hardware.