Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said on Tuesday that the Netherlands will send the first F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine in 2024 after Ukrainian pilots have finished training.

"The actual delivery of the jets, that will be starting somewhere next year," Ollongren told US TV channel MSNBC, when asked about the delivery of the F-16s to Kiev, adding that the exact date of the delivery depends on how long it takes to train Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets.

"We really do not know how long it will take to do this training. So we estimate six to eight months, which is really, really fast if you compare it to the training we do with our pilots ... We are working on a training center in Romania to have it up and running as soon as possible," Ollongren told the broadcaster.  

Great to be back in the studio of @Morning_Joe to discuss F-16's for Ukraine. It remains vital for Europe and the US to act as one against the blatant Russian aggression. We need to end Putin’s war in Ukraine to prevent future aggression.https://t.co/3S4Jm1AOjU

— Kajsa Ollongren (@DefensieMin) September 26, 2023

In August, the US Defense Department announced that Denmark and the Netherlands would begin transferring F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine within a few months after Ukrainian pilots completed the necessary training in the US.

The US government said it would start training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 jets in October, once they had finished the required English language training in September.

In mid-July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the delivery of F-16 fighter jets would further escalate the conflict in Ukraine, as the aircraft have been modified to make them nuclear-capable and therefore pose a direct threat to Russia.

Read more: 60 F-16s sufficient for Kiev to complete combat tasks: Air Force spox