Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s high-speed tour of Europe’s smaller countries continued in Athens on Tuesday, where he obtained further military and diplomatic support after securing a long-awaited commitment on the provision of F-16s at the weekend.
The Ukrainian president met Serbia’s president and Croatia’s prime minister at a Balkans summit in the Greek capital, while a day earlier Greece’s prime minister had said his country would help train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 jets.
Although Serbia maintains trade and military relations with Russia, its president, Aleksander Vučić, said “Serbia respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, in a bilateral meeting with Zelenskiy.
Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenković, said, according to Zelenskiy, that Zagreb was “preparing a new defence package” for Ukraine, the latest in a string of military aid deals secured since the start of Zelenskiy’s tour on Saturday.
Its centrepiece was the breakthrough agreement for Kyiv to obtain up to 61 F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands and Denmark, announced after successive bilateral meetings in Eindhoven and Copenhagen.
“I thank you and the whole of Denmark – all the weapons you’re giving to protect freedom and for F-16s we agreed on,” Zelenskiy said in a speech to a crowd waving Ukrainian and Danish flags outside the Danish parliament on Monday. “Today we are confident that Russia will lose this war,” he added.
Although the US, easily the world’s largest defence spender, has dominated the supply of weapons to Ukraine, with $43bn (£26.7bn) of military aid, strategically significant armaments are controlled by a range of European countries beyond the larger nations of Britain, France and Germany.
Most significant are the F-16 jets, which Ukraine has sought since early in the war to help repel Russia’s far larger air force and assist its forces in breaking through well-defended frontlines as part of a continuing counteroffensive.
F-16s were developed by a consortium of the US and the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Norway from the late 1970s, and although no longer state of the art, they remain in the air forces of many smaller countries, which are also centres of expertise and so could be sources of training.
Although it is the US that now manufactures the aircraft, the Biden administration has taken a back seat in supplying them, to ensure the conflict is not perceived as a battle of US weapons and Ukrainian soldiers against Russia.
Ukraine, meanwhile, knows it is prudent to maintain a broad base of international support, with the war likely to last into 2024, compared with Russia, which has the firm backing of only a handful of countries, including Belarus, Iran and North Korea.
Kyiv cannot afford to pay, however, so offers the star dust of a visit from the president, whose presence shows he is not simply favouring the US and the main European capitals.
Zelenskiy’s speech in Copenhagen underlined his popularity, on a visit in which he got into an F-16 cockpit with his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen. The photo opportunity helped reinforce Denmark’s promise of 19 F-16s and to raise morale in Ukraine, feeling the strain of the 18-month long war.
The tour began with Zelenskiy visiting Stockholm, another main European arms producer, on Saturday, where the president announced an agreement to manufacture Swedish CV90 armoured vehicles in Ukraine, and expressed the hope that Kyiv could obtain Saab Gripen combat jets in addition to F-16s.
Outnumbered by Russia’s greater population and for now unable to join Nato, Ukraine’s best military strategy is to build a wide base of armaments supply. “Every day we add strength to our state, our soldiers and our interaction with partners,” Zelenskiy said, as he released a selfie, filmed on Monday from an aircraft while travelling to Athens.
Russia criticised the F-16 announcement. “The fact that Denmark has now decided to donate 19 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine leads to an escalation of the conflict,” said its ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin. But Moscow has shown no sign of being willing to target Nato members such as Denmark, knowing it could invite a full western military response.
