MOSCOW, August 1 Adviser to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky's office Mykhailo Podolyak said that Ukraine is not going to comment on the news about the arrival of F-16 fighters.
Earlier, Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the situation, reported that the first «small» batch of American F-16 fighters transferred by NATO countries arrived in Ukraine. The Telegraph newspaper reported that Ukraine made its first sorties on F-16s, the fighters were used as air defense.
«Obviously, we will not comment on this in any way, because for us this is a survival factor,» Podolyak said on the air of the national telethon.
The adviser to the head of Zelensky's office noted that there were no official statements about the F-16 from Western countries either.
The Russian Foreign Ministry previously stated that the United States and its NATO satellites were creating risks of a direct armed conflict with the Russian Federation, which was fraught with catastrophic consequences, and the fact that Kiev had F-16 fighters capable of carrying nuclear weapons would be viewed by Russia as a threat from the West in the nuclear sphere.