BUCHAREST: The first group of Ukrainian pilots has started its F-16 fighter jet training at Romania’s regional hub this week, the NATO country’s defense ministry told AFP on Friday.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has been looking to boost its air force, asking the West to donate advanced military jets and sending pilots to train in NATO countries, including France.
Romania inaugurated a hub for F-16 training at its Fetesti air base in November 2023, pledging to also train Ukrainians there.
The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training,” Romanian defense ministry spokesperson Constantin Spinu told AFP.
He said that practical training could begin “toward the end of the year.”
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies.”
The Fetesti hub is part of the country’s air base situated about 150 kilometers outside the capital Bucharest, and was inaugurated after an agreement with the Netherlands was reached to make several F-16s available for training.
The planes are maintained by its US-based manufacturer Lockheed Martin, who also provides the training.
The Romanian army has 26 F-16 jets in total, of which 17 were bought from Portugal and nine from Norway.
Norway is due to supply a further 23 jets to Romania by the end of 2025.
Ukrainian pilots begin F-16 training in Romania
https://arab.news/n2p4w
Ukrainian pilots begin F-16 training in Romania
- The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training“
- Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies“
Macron announces new Ukraine ‘coalition’ summit in Paris on March 27
BRUSSELS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the leaders of a coalition of Ukraine backers would meet again in Paris next week, hoping to finalize plans to secure a potential truce in the war with Russia.
“We will hold another meeting of the coalition of the willing next Thursday in Paris in presence of President (Volodymyr) Zelensky,” Macron told reporters following an EU summit.
Trump signs order to ‘eliminate’ US Education Department
North Korea’s Kim oversees test of latest anti-aircraft missile system: state media
SEOUL: North Korea on Thursday conducted a test fire of its latest anti-aircraft missile system in a drill watched by leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang’s state media reported.
The launch proved the system’s “combat fast response,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, and came just over a week after South Korea began a major annual joint military drill with the United States.
M23 group seizes key town in eastern DR Congo
- Capture of Walikale leaves rebels in control of road linking 4 provinces
GOMA: Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have entered the center of the eastern Congo town of Walikale, a local activist and an M23 source said on Thursday, expanding the insurgents’ presence deep into the Congolese interior despite renewed calls for a ceasefire.
Their entry into Walikale, an area rich in minerals including tin, followed fighting on Wednesday with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s army and allied militias on the outskirts of the town.
The town’s capture would leave the rebels, who took eastern Congo’s two largest cities earlier this year, in control of a road linking four eastern Congo provinces and within 400 km of Kisangani, the country’s fourth-biggest city.
“The rebels are now visible in the city’s center,” said Fiston Misona, a civil society activist in Walikale.
“There are at least seven people wounded who are at the general hospital.”
An M23 source said the rebels were in complete control of the town.
A spokesperson for Congo’s army did not respond to requests for comment about the situation in Walikale.
The rebels’ move on Walikale, a town of about 15,000 people, came despite calls on Tuesday by Congo President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame for an immediate ceasefire after their first direct talks since M23 stepped up its offensive in January.
The conflict, rooted in the fallout from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and competition for mineral riches, has quickly become eastern Congo’s worst conflict since a 1998-2003 war that drew in multiple neighboring countries.
Rwanda has been supporting the ethnic Tutsi-led rebels by providing arms and sending troops, according to the UN, Western governments, and independent experts.
Rwanda has denied backing M23 and says its military has been acting in self-defense against Congo’s army and a militia founded by some of the perpetrators of the genocide.
Trump administration to open more Alaska acres for oil, gas drilling
- US to lift restrictions on building an LNG pipeline and mining road in Alaska
WASHINGTON: US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday announced steps to open up more acreage for oil and gas leasing and lift restrictions on building an LNG pipeline and mining road in Alaska, carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to remove barriers to energy development in the state.
Burgum said the agency plans to reopen the 82 percent of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve that is available for leasing for development and reopen the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing.
He also said the administration would revoke restrictions on land along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River and convey the land to the State of Alaska, which would pave the way forward for the proposed Ambler Road and the Alaska Liquified Natural Gas Pipeline project.
“It’s time for the US to embrace Alaska’s abundant and largely untapped resources as a pathway to prosperity for the Nation, including Alaskans,” said Burgum.
Drilling in Alaska’s pristine Arctic refuge has long been a source of friction between Alaska lawmakers and tribal corporations seeking to open more acres to drilling to spur economic growth, and Democratic presidential administrations that sought to preserve the local ecosystem and wildlife.
A January 8 lease auction that had been mandated by Congress held under the Biden administration’s Interior Department received no bids from energy companies.
The Biden administration last year rejected the Ambler Road Project, a proposed 211-mile road that would connect to a rare earths mining district.
Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy and the state’s congressional delegation have pushed for a reversal of Biden’s Alaska resource development policies.
The oil industry has signalled it would be hesitant to rush into Alaska given its high risk and the possibility of a political pendulum swing in four years that could put Alaska off limits again.
