President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Sunday that F-16s had arrived in Ukraine. A US official said only a limited number of the warplanes are in Ukraine currently, adding the fighters are not flying combat operations. 

In a statement posted to X, Zelensky wrote, “F-16s in Ukraine. We ensured this.” He added that Ukrainian pilots “have already started using them for our country.” 

A US official insisted the operations were not combat missions. “About a half-dozen pilots were conducting test flights on as many jets in “uncontested” Ukrainian airspace,” The New York Times reported the unnamed official said. 

F-16s require two pilots to operate a single aircraft, meaning Ukraine is only able to currently operate three warplanes at a time. 

Zelensky included in his post that Kiev was frequently told Ukraine’s Western partners could not provide F-16s. “We often heard the word “impossible” in response, but we made possible what was our ambition,” he wrote. 

In the opening months of the conflict, President Joe Biden said that sending advanced American weapons would provoke a major war between Russia and NATO. Over the past two years, Biden has walked away from that pledge by sending F-16s, Abrams tanks, and long-range missiles to Ukraine. 

The Kremlin views F-16s in Ukraine as highly provocative as the aircraft are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The members of NATO sending F-16s to Ukraine have not put restrictions on where the aircraft can operate. Some members have explicitly authorized Kiev to use the warplanes to bomb Russia. 

“Just one example of an extremely dangerous turn of events is the United [States’] plans to transfer F-16 fighter jets to the Kiev regime,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last July. “We have informed the nuclear powers, the United States, Britain and France, that Russia cannot ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. No amount of assurances will help here.”