Vladimir Putin warns he’ll shoot down F-16s supplied by West and mocks Nato country
'They become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are.'
Vladimir Putin has once again threatened the nuke the West if Nato military airfields are used by Ukraine to store warplanes.
The Russian president promised missile strikes against countries who let the Ukrainian army use their bases to store F-16 supersonic fighters.
The US, Denmark and the Netherlands are planning to deliver the first of dozens of the warplanes to Ukraine this summer.
Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Ukraine has desperately been trying to gain access to fighter jets.
Putin said: ‘We will destroy their aircraft in the same way that we destroy their tanks, armoured vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.
‘Of course, if they are used from third country airfields, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are.’
Putin also vowed to retaliate if any of the warplanes carry nuclear weapons, which no one has ever suggested.
He said: ‘And we will also have to take this into account when organising combat operations.’
Yet when he spoke to pilots separately during a visit to Torzhok in the Tver region, the Kremlin ruler said the idea of attacking other countries was ‘nonsense’.
The West’s trumpeting of the danger of Putin attacking a NATO country was ‘another way to deceive your population and extract additional costs from people, force them to bear this burden on their shoulders, that’s all,’ he said.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies to speed up deliveries of warplanes and air defence systems following the strike.
This followed a deadly strike on the city of Kharkiv, which killed at least three people on Wednesday.
‘Bolstering Ukraine’s air defence and expediting the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine are vital tasks,’ he said in a statement on social media.
‘There are no rational explanations for why Patriots, which are plentiful around the world, are still not covering the skies of Kharkiv and other cities,’ he added.
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