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00:00Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16 fighter jets for operations within the nation.
00:05The confirmation from President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, as he met with military pilots
00:09at an airbase flanked by two of those jets, with two more flying overhead.
00:14Well, earlier we spoke to our correspondent Emanuel Shaz in Kyiv.
00:18The news that a handful of those F-16 jets have reached Ukraine is welcome here at sea.
00:27People are relieved to find out that after two years of wait, those planes are finally here.
00:32However, Volodymyr Zelensky warned that in order to be efficient, in order to hope to attain some
00:40kind of air superiority against the Russian aviation, well, Ukraine ought to have 130 fighter
00:48jets of the kind of F-16s. And of course, this number is not reached yet. There are 79 F-16s
00:56that have been pledged by Ukraine's allies, but they will come, you know, gradually. We see like
01:01it is believed that around 10 of them have reached Ukraine now. That's what Ukrainian
01:06media is saying. That's not even a squadron, a complete squadron. So this is the first hurdle.
01:13The second hurdle is that pilots are being trained abroad, but the training takes time.
01:19And so far, there's not enough pilots being trained for the number of planes,
01:24the total number of planes that have been pledged. So of course, there's a lot of relief here, but
01:29also a lot of questions as to how many more planes are going to come, when they will come.
01:37And of course, how efficient will the plane that have arrived be on the battlefield?