Ukrainian fighter pilots are being trained to fly F-16 aircraft, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, arriving in Brussels for a meeting of defense ministers of the North Atlantic Alliance, reports The Guardian, taken from News.ro.

The NATO allies have not yet reached an agreement on supplying Ukraine with the so-called fourth-generation US fighter jets, but Jens Stoltenberg said that the training of Ukrainian personnel continues.

“The fact that the training has started gives us the opportunity to also decide on the delivery of the aircraft, and then the pilots will be ready to fly them,” Stoltenberg said.

As recently as February, US President Joe Biden rejected Ukraine’s requests for the delivery of fighter jets, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi gave firm commitments that the devices would only be used to target Russian forces in Ukraine.

It takes months to train Ukrainian pilots who were trained to fly Soviet jets to fly the F-16. In addition, Ukraine still does not even have suitable runways for the F-16, if NATO allies agree to provide the equipment.

At the same time, the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark will supply Ukraine with “high-priority” air defense equipment, the four states said Thursday in a joint statement sent ahead of a meeting of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine convened in Brussels. According to CNN, hundreds of short- and medium-range air defense missiles and related systems are included in this initiative. The delivery of the equipment has begun and “should be completed in a few weeks,” the four countries said.