President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi in a video address to the people on Friday evening emphasized the importance of speeding up all the necessary preparations to get as close as possible to the moment when Ukraine receives F-16 aircraft. He announced that he had a “good” phone conversation with US President Joe Biden, and the United States will participate in the training of Ukrainian pilots and engineers, other “news” in this area and much more are expected, News.ro reports.

“All agreements that we brought home from our partners have already been implemented. First, the F-16. The tasks are obvious. For the international community, it is to expand educational missions as much as possible. For the military, it means speeding up infrastructure preparation, sending pilots and engineers to ensure full readiness of Ukraine. And we are all working together to bring closer the moment when the F-16s will help us deter Russian terrorists as much as possible,” Volodymyr Zelenskyi said.

At the end of last year and at the beginning of this week, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on a tour of Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece, at the end of which he received assurances that Ukraine would receive F-16 aircraft. asks for a long time The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway will provide Ukraine with planes when Kyiv has trained personnel and the necessary infrastructure. Ukrainian pilots have already started training in Denmark, and Greece will help in this. The US also said it would train Ukrainian pilots for the F-16 on American soil.

“I had a conversation with US President Joe Biden late last night. It was a good conversation. I thanked him for congratulating him on Independence Day (not for Ukraine). We discussed how to further strengthen freedom. And we have an important new deal: America will join in training F-16 pilots and engineers. There will be more news in this and other areas. Thank you!” Zelensky said in a video speech on Friday evening.

The Kyiv leader emphasized that the “problem of coordination” is extremely important regarding the planes and said that he discussed it with the main officials in Ukraine.

“We are preparing new defense packages of exactly the content that our soldiers need and that they told me about when I was on the front lines,” Zelenskyy said, without providing other details.

At the diplomatic level, Zelenskyi said that this autumn will be full of events for Ukraine, and noted that on Friday in Kyiv he received the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, with whom he discussed the export of grain to the Black Sea, as well as Turkey’s mediation in the release of Ukrainians who have been into Russian captivity.

Moscow confirmed on Friday that a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is being prepared.

Zelensky noted that the meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan “was an important meeting. This includes the security component, our joint diplomatic work and the fundamental humanitarian things we do together. In particular, it is about freeing our people from Russian captivity,” Zelenskyy said. “We talked about the Peace Formula and the preparation of the Global Peace Summit. We also talked about the situation that arose due to Russia’s vile attacks on the export of grain from the Black Sea region. Obviously, these are attacks on global security. They are calculated. They aim to provoke crises in different regions of the world. And together with Turkey, we can step by step restore security, which we have repeatedly proven. I think we will do even more together,” said Zelensky.

The President of Ukraine assumed that the attack on corruption inside the country will continue, and next week new measures are expected in this regard. “There will be special internal political meetings. They are already programmed. As for legislative decisions, it is about what will certainly protect our state from all those who try to weaken it and who, unfortunately, do not think about Ukraine, even if they hold positions in the state system. The authorities of Ukraine have no alternative,” the Ukrainian leader said, considering that in the fall Ukraine is waiting for an EU report evaluating its efforts in order to be able to open accession negotiations.

In the end, the president thanked the soldiers who are fighting at different points of the front, mentioning some of the “hot” places of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive: the Bakhmut direction, the Lyman direction, Kreminna, Orihiv, Donetsk, Kremenchuk, Zaporizhzhia.

____

• Follow the latest events of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HotNews.ro