Ukraine said on Thursday it had received a first batch of French Mirage 2000 fighter jets as well as US-made F-16 fighters from the Netherlands as European allies seek to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in its war with Russia.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to invest at least €1.5-billion this year to support Ukraine’s economy and businesses during wartime, the EBRD’s chief told Reuters on Thursday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the US needed to formulate its policy on ending the conflict in Ukraine and that Moscow could then base its position on specific US action.
Ukraine receives F-16s from Netherlands, Mirage jets from France
Ukraine said on Thursday it had received a first batch of French Mirage 2000 fighter jets as well as US-made F-16 fighters from the Netherlands as European allies seek to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in its war with Russia.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, Ukraine had only a largely outdated air force inherited from the Soviet Union when it broke up in 1991.
Now facing Russian advances in the east and long-range air strikes, Ukraine has repeatedly pressed Western allies to supply it with increasingly advanced arms and ammunition including armoured vehicles, tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighters.
Mirage 2000s are the latest sophisticated jets Ukraine has received from allies after the first F-16s arrived last summer, marking a military milestone for the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky praised France and the Netherlands for their commitment to helping modernise Ukraine’s air force.
“These modern combat aircraft have already arrived in Ukraine and will soon begin carrying out combat missions, strengthening our defence and enhancing our ability to effectively counter Russian aggression,” said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov.
The exact number of F-16 and Mirage jets delivered was not revealed.
The Dutch defence ministry said that for security reasons it would not comment on the timing of deliveries, nor on the amount supplied at any given time.
The Netherlands has promised to deliver Ukraine a total of 24 F-16s, next to the fighter jets it supplies to a training centre for Ukrainian pilots and crew in Romania.
French officials also cited security reasons in declining to specify how many warplanes had been supplied, although they did say the jets had been adapted to enable air-to-ground strikes.
The Mirage 2000 is a multi-role, single-engine jet fighter. Last June, President Emmanuel Macron promised that France would train Ukrainian pilots to fly the Dassault-made jets, crossing a new line in military support for Kyiv.
The Mirage, which has been replaced by the Rafale fighter in the French Air Force, was initially conceived for aerial dogfights.
A French parliamentary report at the end of 2024 said that of the 26 Mirage 2000s in the French Air Force, six would be given to Ukraine.
EBRD to invest at least €1.5bn in Ukraine’s economy this year
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to invest at least €1.5-billion this year to support Ukraine’s economy and businesses during wartime, the EBRD’s chief told Reuters on Thursday.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the EBRD has stepped up operations in Ukraine, investing more than €6.2-billion across various sectors. Last year the bank devoted a record €2.4-billion to the country.
EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso said the bank would keep its focus on Ukraine’s private sector, particularly energy after repeated Russian attacks on the national grid, as well as national and municipal infrastructure.
“Our plan is to continue with this level of investment. At a minimum, we aim for €1.5-billion of investment but if we can do more. .. we will do it,” said Renaud-Basso in the interview during a visit to Kyiv.
She said the bank’s operations were demand-driven and it was prepared to increase its investments to about €3-billion a year in Ukraine once the war was over.
The Ukrainian economy has been devastated by the war with millions of people fleeing the fighting, cities and infrastructure heavily damaged by airstrikes, and exports and supply chains disrupted.
The economy shrank by about a third in 2022 and, despite returning to growth in 2023 and 2024, remains smaller than before the war. The government relies on foreign financial aid to maintain its macroeconomic and financial stability. The EBRD is a key investor in both state companies and private businesses.
US needs to formulate stance on ending Ukraine conflict, says Russia
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the US needed to formulate its policy on ending the conflict in Ukraine and that Moscow could then base its own position on specific US action.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have not spoken by phone since Trump’s inauguration, according to public statements from officials on both sides.
Russia’s RIA state news agency earlier on Thursday quoted a senior legislator as saying that preparations for a meeting between Putin and Trump were, however, at an “advanced stage”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said separately that Moscow had heard many words and statements from Washington on Ukraine, but that for now there was no clarity on what exactly the US envisaged when it came to trying to strike a deal to end the conflict there.
“As for the role or possible role of the United States in resolving the crisis around Ukraine, once again: everything will depend on concrete actions and on the plans of the new administration embodied in those actions,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow.
“For now, there are many words and many statements. [But] there is no clarity on the steps being taken [by the US], so it would be premature to talk about the prospects for negotiations or anything at all in this context.
“As for Washington, they should probably formulate their policy and we will proceed ourselves based on their concrete steps and actions,” she said.
Trump and Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal to end the fighting in Ukraine but have yet to disclose full details of what that plan might look like.
Ukraine sees marked improvement in accuracy of Russia’s North Korean missiles
North Korean ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine by Russian forces since late December have been far more precise than salvos of the weapons launched over the past year, two senior Ukrainian sources told Reuters.
At a time when Moscow’s burgeoning ties with Pyongyang are causing alarm from Washington to Seoul, the increase in accuracy — to within 50-100m of the intended target — suggests North Korea is successfully using the battlefield to test its missile technology, said the sources.
A military source, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, described a marked improvement in the precision of all the more than 20 North Korean ballistic missiles that hit Ukraine over the past several weeks. A second source, a senior government official familiar with the issue, confirmed the findings when asked by Reuters.
Yang Uk, a weapons expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said such improvements in North Korean missile capabilities had troubling implications for its potential to threaten South Korea, Japan and the US or sell upgraded weapons to “failed” states or armed groups.
“That can have a major impact on stability in the region and the world,” he said.
North Korea’s military programmes have developed rapidly in recent years, including short- and intermediate-range missiles that Pyongyang says can be tipped with nuclear warheads. However, until its involvement in Ukraine, the long-isolated nation had never tested the new weapons in combat.
The military source said forensic analysis conducted on debris had not identified changes to the design of the missiles, although there had been very little debris left to analyse.
Two possible explanations were the missiles being fitted with better navigation systems or with a steering mechanism to help manoeuvring, said the source.
According to Yang, other factors that could improve accuracy include better targeting information for crews, new guidance system components provided by Russia and improvements based on the data and experience North Korean scientists had gathered in the war.
Earlier in the war, the missiles had an accuracy of 1-3km, but the most recent had an accuracy of between 50 and 100m, said the military source.
Preparations for Putin-Trump meeting at ‘advanced stage’
Preparations for a meeting between Putin and Trump were at an “advanced stage”, Russian state news agency RIA quoted a senior legislator as saying on Thursday.
It cited Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, as saying the meeting could take place in February or March.
Trump and Putin have both said they are keen to hold a meeting whose agenda could include nuclear arms control and global energy prices as well as Trump’s stated aim to bring a swift end to the Ukraine war.
Russia’s spies, in retaliation against the CIA, urge Americans to get in touch
Russia’s foreign intelligence service released an English-language video on Thursday, urging “true American patriots” who care about world peace to get in touch via secure communication in response to efforts by the CIA to recruit Russians.
The US’s Central Intelligence Agency has said the war in Ukraine is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to recruit agents in Russia. It released a video in 2023 targeting Russian officials with an appeal to tell the truth about a system it said is riddled with lying sycophants.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the main successor organisation to the Soviet-era KGB’s First Main Directorate, ridiculed the CIA’s “clumsy attempts” to recruit Russians with the videos.
The SVR video, released on its website and also appearing on the Telegram messaging app, references the joint Soviet-US efforts to defeat Nazi Germany in World War Two and then underscores the dangers of the Ukraine war.
“We are convinced that the destructive efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency are futile, and the Russian and American peoples have not forgotten the glorious pages of the history of the joint struggle against Nazism,” it said.
“In our video message, we not only remind you of the past, but also offer options aimed at the future.”
The video, part parody of the CIA’s videos and part emotional images of a ranch and Soviet and US troops embracing during World War Two, then switches to harsher pictures of the war in Ukraine, where the US and other Western nations have backed Kyiv with military and financial help.
It ends with an address that interested US citizens can use to communicate with the SVR over the TOR network which allows anonymous communications.
The SVR and its predecessors have run some of the most damaging agents in US history, including Julius Rosenberg, who helped the Soviets obtain nuclear secrets, and the moles Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames who betrayed thousands of US secrets. DM