Brussels — French President Emmanuel Macron has not ruled out fighter jet deliveries to Ukraine, but said such move would "definitely not take place in the coming weeks."
Training requirements, among other things, meant that it would take longer, he said early on Friday morning after an EU summit in Brussels, which was also attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron said that fighter jets were not what Ukraine needs right now in the war against Russia. More important, for example, was additional artillery, he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the delivery of fighter jets was "not a topic of discussion here."
The Slovakian government had been more positive about the repeated Ukrainian request for warplanes. Zelensky had asked the neighbouring country directly for fighter jets of the Soviet-type MiG-29.
Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger promised Zelensky that he would "work on the fulfilment of this wish," according to a recording of a short conversation between the two politicians released by the government office in Bratislava.
Heger told the Slovak news agency TASR that a concrete procedure for handing over fighter jets would be clarified not only within Slovakia, but also at the European level, because Slovakia would hand over the MiG-29 to Ukraine under an EU funding mechanism.
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