COPENHAGEN, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States will spearhead a new international coalition to help Ukraine establish a future air force based on F-16 fighter jets, the Danish ministry of defence said on Wednesday.

The new coalition intends to build infrastructure around F-16s, including maintenance facilities to support the operation of the planes, the ministry said in a statement.

Denmark and the Netherlands were the first two countries to commit to donating F-16 jets to Ukraine, whose current air force has a fleet of ageing Soviet-era fighter jets, in its war with Russia.

"This is a natural move following the leading role Denmark already has in relation to the military support for Ukraine and especially in relation to the donation of F-16 fighter jets," Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said.

Denmark expects to deliver the first six of out of a total of 19 F-16s to Ukraine in March or April next year, he told broadcaster TV2 on Wednesday.

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[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My assumption is that it's important for the US to avoid optics of being the aggressor since that's what a lot of Kremlin and CCP propaganda portrays.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe that's it, all I know is that USA has avoided to pioneer any help that can be used offensively. Or at least that's what they claim. What's really going on behind closed doors is hard to tell.

Denmark being very progressive on Ukraine aid which we usually aren't on such things. is to put it mildly "interesting". The Danish government is very pro American, all the parties of the government have long histories of cooperation with USA in everything military and intelligence, including the Thule base in Greenland. We also warned USA about nukes going to Cuba, which basically started the cold war. And the Danish government boasted about stellar cooperation with USA when the Snowden shit hit the fan.

I think USA is trying to deflect some of their help, through European initiatives, they may well be involved in.

As we can see on the numbers, USA is by far the biggest contributor.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the context, that all makes sense from my perspective. I suppose it's impossible to really know without key information we aren't aware of.