PARIS (Reuters) – France plans to provide Mirage 2000 warplanes to Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron told French TV stations on Thursday.
Macron said that on Friday, on the occasion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to France as part of D-Day anniversary celebrations, his government would announce it will provide the warplanes to Ukraine.
He did not specify how many Mirages France would provide, by when or under what financial terms.
Macron said France has proposed Ukrainian pilots be trained in France from this summer.
He also said France had proposed to train 4,500 Ukraine soldiers. He did not say where the soldiers would be trained, but he said that at the moment there are no French military trainers on Ukrainian soil.
The Mirage 2000 is a multi-role, single-engine jet fighter.
Zelenskiy said in September he had struck an agreement on training Ukraine pilots in France in conversation with Macron.
The head of the Ukrainian Air Force said in January that French Mirage aircraft may reinforce the Ukrainian air force.
(Reporting by Michel Rose; Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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