The Netherlands will supply Ukraine with eighteen F-16 fighter jets, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte confirmed on Friday. He wrote on social media that he notified his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of the caretaker Cabinet’s decision during a phone call on Friday morning.
The Netherlands already confirmed in August that it would supply Ukraine with the aircraft after receiving permission from the United States, where the warplanes are manufactured. Zelenskyy had requested the aircraft during earlier conversations with its allies. Although it was never officially confirmed that the Netherlands would provide 18 aircraft in total, it was known that the Dutch military had 18 surplus F-16s that were not in an operational state. The other 24 are operational, even as the Dutch Air Force has been upgrading its fleet with the newer F-35.
May every missile fired and every bomb dropped find their goal: a Russian aggressor. I hope Ukraine will put our country’s jets to good use. They certainly did good work with the guns and ammo we sent 👍
We remember MH17. Hopefully these fighters will pay that back tenfold.
No one seems to remember this flight, and none still faced any repercussuions for killing 100+ peoples out of blue. I don’t think it was deliberare, but that incompetence neeeds to meet repercussions, and instead it was covered up. Why? Was it just a powerplay? It in itself casts a lot of doubts. And not many NL families can really lay it off. They aren’t used to just lose people to an ‘accident’, caused by ‘allegedly’ DNR rocket under an ‘allegedly’ russian control. Eventually, they would. It’s just so stupid to postpone it instead of accepting the misfire.
Well, I for one remember. And will until the day I die.
When the aircraft was shot down, I was following the news on Twitter. You got to see everything. There were images of people still strapped in their seats, smashed into the ground. Little kids too. It was haunting. Especially when the looting started, and you saw videos of people taking things from the dead. It was surreal, especially considering there were 198 Dutch people on board; two thirds of the total. You could recognise typical Dutch things like supermarket bags, Dutch passports, clothing, that sort of thing.
Speaking for myself personally: I hope our jets, guns and ammo kill at least a 10 Russians for every victim on that plane. It won’t fix what was done. But we’ll make sure Russia remembers their ‘mistake’.
Vote to send more materiel to Ukraine, to cockblock russian influence in all meetings, to deny any of our transit and deals on your soil. You have democracy and you can use it for that. Make it stop.
“none still faced any repercussions,”
Because nobody ever does. This has happened several times in the past, and it’s always coughed up as an accident because making a scene out of it would cause more problems.