Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday night that the pledge represented “a good start for the coalition,” his office reported.
In his nightly address to the nation, Ukraine’s president stated: “Yesterday, we … agreed in Britain with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that we would work on a coalition of fighter jets – training, aircraft, results. Yesterday, this was also supported by French President Emmanuel Macron, and today it was supported by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.”
He added: “A good start for the coalition. Thank you all.”
The UK’s Sunak and the Netherlands’ Rutte on Tuesday pledged to build an “international coalition” to provide fighter jet support for Ukraine, The Defense Post website reported.
“The Prime Minister and Prime Minister Rutte agreed they would work to build (an) international coalition to provide Ukraine with combat air capabilities, supporting with everything from training to procuring F16 jets,” a spokesman for the British prime minister said in a statement following a meeting of Council of Europe leaders in Iceland.
Western nations have balked so far at providing advanced jets to help Ukraine take command of the skies against Russia, the AFP news agency reported.
Sunak said on Monday, however, that Britain was preparing to open a flight school to train Ukrainian pilots, while France’s Macron offered to train Ukrainian fighter pilots but ruled out sending warplanes to Kyiv, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported.
Fate of Black Sea grain deal in the balance: reports
The last ship was due to leave a port in Ukraine on Wednesday under a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain, the Reuters news agency reported.
On Thursday, Russia could quit the agreement over obstacles to its grain and fertiliser exports, according to news outlets.
The United Nations and Turkey in July 2022 brokered the Black Sea deal for an initial 120 days to alleviate a global food crisis that had been deepened by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, one of the world's major grain exporters, Reuters reported.
Russia then agreed to extend the deal for a further 120 days in November, before agreeing to a 60-day extension in March 2023, according to news outlets.
Moscow said at the time the pact would only be extended for 60 days, until May 18, unless its demands regarding Russian agricultural exports were met, according to Reuters.
Russian demands
The Kremlin’s demands were spelled out by Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia in a letter to UN officials on March 16, The Guardian reported.
They include "returning the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) to the SWIFT payment system; a resumption of supplies to Russia of agricultural machinery and spare parts; lifting restrictions on insurance and access to ports for Russian ships and cargo; the resumption of an ammonia pipeline from Russa’s Togliatti to Odesa in Ukraine; and unblocking accounts and financial activities of Russian fertiliser companies," according to The Guardian.
Some 30 million metric tonnes of grain and foodstuffs has been exported from Ukraine under the Black Sea deal, including nearly 600,000 metric tonnes of grain in World Food Programme vessels for aid operations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Yemen, Reuters reported, citing UN officials.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that “there are still a lot of open questions” when asked about a potential extension of the agreement.
He added, as quoted by US broadcaster CNBC: “When the appropriate decision is made, we will inform you, this is the only thing I can say so far."
Wednesday is day 448 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, president.gov.ua, The Defense Post, Reuters, The Guardian, CNBC