If Western countries supply Ukraine with F16 fighter jets, “they will not change the situation on the battlefield,” President Vladimir Putin told military pilots on Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Reuters.

But fighter jets, he also said, can carry nuclear weapons, and Moscow will have to factor that into its military planning.

Putin’s comments to Russian pilots at a meeting north of Moscow followed comments made earlier in the day by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the planes were due to arrive in Ukraine in the coming months.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Wednesday again called on his country’s Western allies to “accelerate the delivery” of F-16 fighter jets and transfer more Patriot air defense systems after a deadly Russian strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

“Strengthening Ukraine’s air defense and speeding up the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine are vital tasks,” he wrote on the social network. “There is no rational justification to explain why the Patriots, of which there are many in the world, still do not cover the skies of Kharkiv and other cities that were attacked by Russian terrorists,” Zelenskyy added.