The Parliament of Denmark (Folketing) has approved another package of military assistance to Ukraine for 2023-2028, totaling EUR 2.95 billion.
The relevant statement was made by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Twitter, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“Great news from Copenhagen: the Folketing approved another package of military assistance to Ukraine worth 2.95 billion euros for 2023 -2028,” Reznikov wrote.
In this regard, Reznikov thanked Morten Bødskov, Troels Lund Poulsen, and the Danish people.
“Every growl of Leopard and salvo of CAESAR is a salute in your honor. And your participation in the ‘Bird Coalition’ will add to this orchestra the sounds from the sky that we long for,” Reznikov added.
A reminder that the Danish government is ready to transfer the F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine if the United States, which produces these aircraft, approves this step.
(C) 2023 Ukrinform
Great! Why Washington did not already approve the F-16 transfer? We already replaced them with F-35’s.
Pretty simple: the aid package for this fiscal year is almost depleted, so this can only be done from September onwards.
And unfortunately in the U.S. you cannot send arms without accounting for them, even if the equipment is already retired.
The F-16 is however still in service in the U.S., although some are replaced.
So if the U.S. can manage to send Dutch and Danish airframes, this will not be substracted from the aid package. The issue is not availability of air frames, but even taking these from the deserts will cost hundreds of millions.
That is why they are currently only doing things to prepare for this: training pilots.
The aid package for next year is twice as large, so I expect ATACMS and fighter jets to be included.
The issue is that if the U.S. spends too much now, it cannot supply ammo and other critical items until September.
I am not saying this is the entire reason ATACMS weren’t supplied before, I think there are other reasons for this, but I do think the F-16 thing is a money issue.
I don’t think the Biden administration is afraid of escalation, as they did supply missiles meant for the F-16 and Mig-29 jets that are about as good as early generations of F-16’s .
What does suck is that Dutch F-16’s are very old, probably poorly maintained and they haven’t received a lot of upgrades.
The money issue could easily be circumvented if the US allowed the lend lease to go into effect, at least for the F-16s and ATACMS. I’m sure that Ukraine would agree to that.