President's Office says which country may be the first to give Kiev planes

The UK may become the first country to unblock the supply of military aircraft to Ukraine, the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said at a meeting with journalists.

He noted that "this process has already started" and that the first planes will appear in Ukraine very soon.

According to Yermak, many countries are ready to provide Ukraine with the planes, but are waiting for such a step to be agreed with other partner countries or want to become "second choice" after someone starts transferring military aircraft first.

Yermak stressed that Ukraine had already gone through similar stories with Patriot air defence systems and other weapons: from categorical reluctance to agreement on supplies.

We would like to point out that the speaker of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuriy Ignat, said that to protect the sky Ukraine needs to replace morally and physically obsolete Soviet aircraft of different types with a single type of multi-purpose fighter, which could be the F-16, in the number of up to two hundred planes.