The next meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian defense issues (the so-called “Ramstein”) will be held on June 15. This will be the group’s 13th meeting. The White House website cited information from a briefing by Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder, specifying that the meeting will take place in the Belgian capital Brussels (reported by UNIAN on June 9).
Ryder noted that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel next week to Brussels, where he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley will hold a “Ramstein” on June 15 and a meeting of NATO defense ministers on June 16.
Note that Ramstein-12 was held on May 25 and was devoted, in particular, to the “aviation” issue. Thus, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16s will begin in the coming weeks. It was also announced that a coalition for the training of Ukrainian pilots would be created, which would be led by Denmark and the Netherlands.
Oleksiy Kopytko, a freelance adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, said that the upcoming Ramstein will result in concrete decisions on the aircraft coalition – in particular, a number of countries that have F-16s will offer Ukrainian pilots retraining, and other states will be able to finance support for this training.
