Denmark has already handed over most of the promised F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine as part of its military assistance.

This was announced by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov following the 26th meeting of the Contact Group on Defence of Ukraine in the Ramstein format.

The rest of the combat aircraft will be delivered to the Ukrainian Air Force in the near future.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced the transfer of the previous, second batch of Danish F-16 fighters to Ukraine in early December last year.

At that time, the planes from the first batch provided by Denmark had already shot down Russian missiles during the occupiers’ shelling of Ukrainian territory.

As of November, the Ukrainian Air Force had 6 Danish F-16 multi-role fighters.

Denmark has pledged to provide Ukraine with a total of 19 F-16 aircraft, which had been upgraded under the Mid-Life Update (MLU) programme in the 2000s.

It was previously announced that the fighters would be delivered in three batches.

As part of the modernisation programme, the Danish combat aircraft were overhauled and received, among other things, a more modern AN/APG-66(V)2 airborne radar.

As it is known, Denmark, together with the Netherlands, has led an international fighter jet coalition within which Ukrainian pilots and technicians were learning to fly F-16s.

Denmark is replacing its F-16s with new fifth-generation F-35A multi-role fighters. The next batch of three aircraft arrived in the country in mid-January 2025.

Last month, Yurii Ihnat, head of the Communications Department of the Ukrainian Air Force Command, said that for the first time in the world, a Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet had shot down six Russian cruise missiles in one combat mission.