Monitoring Desk
LONDON: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Britain on Wednesday to provide Kyiv “wings for freedom” by giving combat aircrafts to assist turn the wave against Russia’s attack, hoping to overcome Western nations’ reluctance to take that measure.
The west has scaled up its pledges of military assistance for Ukraine this year with pledges of hundreds of battle tanks and weapons but has so far refused to provide war aircrafts.
London-Kyiv
The UK said nothing was off the table and it wanted to initiate training Ukrainian pilots to enable them to fly “sophisticated fighter jets in the future”.
“The first measure in being able to provide advanced jet fighters is to have soldiers that are able of using them. That is a procedure that takes time. We have initiated that process today,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said alongside President Zelenskiy in southwest part of England.
Earlier President Zelenskiy lauded London and the West for the assistance and the sanctions they had supplied so far in an address to MPs at Westminster Hall in London.
Read Also: London-sized Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica Ice Shelf
President Zelenskiy called on the Western countries to provide them the fighter jets. He said, “I appeal to the world and you, with simple words – combat airplanes for Kyiv, wings for freedom.”
The spokesperson of the UK’s Prime Minister said that the secretary of defense will conduct an investigation to decide on the matter of the provision of jet fighters to Ukraine, adding it is a long-term procedure.
According to the news agency, TASS Russia’s embassy to the UK warned that any delivery of fighter jets to Kyiv would have serious political and military consequences.
