Ukraine needs 300 armored vehicles and 80 F-16 fighter jets for offensive
Presidential Advisor Podoljak in his office in Kiev
© AFP
Ukraine says it needs hundreds of additional armored vehicles and up to 80 F-16 fighter jets for its counter-offensive to recapture Russian-held territory. His country needs “in particular 200 to 300 armored vehicles” and “60 to 80 F-16 fighter jets to seal off the airspace properly,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podoliak told the AFP news agency in an interview on Wednesday.
Podoljak admitted difficulties with the launched last month counteroffensive on. These are partly due to the heavily mined territory. There are also logistical problems, including the delivery of weapons. Without a doubt, the offensive will therefore be “quite difficult and lengthy and take a lot of time,” said Podoljak.
In addition, after Russia’s withdrawal from the grain agreement, Kiev is trying to get a joint military patrol of Black Sea countries such as Bulgaria and Turkey under a UN mandate in order to be able to continue grain exports from its ports, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser. Negotiations on this are already underway “at all levels”.
Since July 2022, the grain agreement had enabled Ukraine to export grain despite the Russian war of aggression across the Black Sea. Russia let the agreement expire on Monday. The Kremlin justified the move by saying that Kiev had misused the grain export corridor for “military purposes”.
AFP
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