Ukraine takes delivery of first F-16s

Catch up quickly with the stories from Central and Eastern Europe that matter, this week led by news of delivery of the first F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

Russia’s war on Ukraine

Ukraine this week received the first F-16 fighter jets that it has sought for months to fight back against an onslaught of Russian missile strikes, a US official confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

A Ukrainian lawmaker also confirmed Ukraine had received a small number of F-16 fighter jets. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak on the subject publicly.

Ukraine has been pushing its Western allies for F-16s for Ukraine for months, saying they were critically needed to fight back against the onslaught of missiles Russia has fired against it. 

The American-made F-16 is an iconic fighter jet that’s been the front-line combat plane of choice for the NATO alliance and numerous air forces around the world for 50 years.

Ukraine this week repelled “one of the most massive” attacks launched by Russia since the start of the war.

Air defence systems shot down 89 Iranian-designed explosive drones and another missile overnight, the Ukrainian air force said on Wednesday.

The capital Kyiv was the main target of the attack. Buildings in the region were damaged by falling debris but there were no reports of casualties.

The attack comes more than 29 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Almost daily bombardments have put the country’s air defences under considerable strain.

Russia insists it is targeting military and energy sites, but strikes on residential areas are frequent.

Ukraine this week struck a deal with international bondholders to restructure about 20 billion US dollars of debt, boosting Kyiv’s drive to use private capital to finance its war effort against Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government said on Monday that it won support from investors to reduce the face value of the debt by more than a third, paving the way for a formal restructuring in the coming weeks.

The agreement will replace a two-year moratorium on bond payments that was granted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but was due to expire next month.

Ukraine sought debt relief as part of its conditions for continuing bailout loans from the IMF, which said it had endorsed Monday’s deal alongside backing from the US, UK and other allies that are financing Kyiv’s war effort.

Other news from the region

Hungary’s recent decision to ease visa restrictions for Russian visitors is an open door to spies and EU leaders should take urgent countermeasures, the bloc’s biggest political party has said. In a letter seen by the Financial Times, Manfred Weber, chair of the European People’s party, said the move would allow unvetted Russians to travel through much of the EU unhindered and raised “serious national security concerns”. Weber has written to European Council president Charles Michel to raise the issue at the next leaders’ summit in October.

Moldova’s Foreign Ministry this week declared an employee of the Russian Embassy to Chișinău persona non grata and gave him 48 hours to leave the country. Russian Ambassador Oleg Vasnetsov “was summoned today to the Foreign Ministry and was handed a note on declaring an embassy employee persona non grata,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the move was prompted by Moldovan authorities obtaining “information and evidence” proving that the Russian diplomat conducted “activities incompatible with diplomatic status on the territory of Moldova.”

The United States is suspending more than 95 million US dollars in aid to the Georgian government as a result of the country’s drift toward Kremlin-style authoritarianism, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday. Blinken had ordered the State Department in May to conduct a review of Washington’s bilateral cooperation with Tbilisi after the Georgian parliament passed a controversial “foreign agents” law that designates civil society groups that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”

Russia on Wednesday completed the withdrawal of its border guards from Yerevan’s Zvartnots International Airport, a move that was demanded by Armenia earlier this year amid mounting tensions between the two countries. Russian border guards have for decades been stationed at Zvartnots as well as along Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced in March that his government had given Moscow until August 1 to remove them from the airport. Armenia has the capacity to carry out border controls there “without the help of the Russian side,” he said.

Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia on Monday to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. The protests were held simultaneously in the western town of Sabac and the central towns of Kraljevo, Arandjelovac, Ljig and Barajevo. They followed similar gatherings in other Serbian towns in recent weeks. The deal reached earlier this month on “critical raw materials” could reduce Europe’s dependency on China and push Serbia, which has close ties to Russia and China, closer to the EU.

Slovenian instalment payment solutions provider Leanpay said on Tuesday that it had secured 10 million euros in a Series B funding round led by Bulgarian private equity firm BlackPeak Capital and venture capital firm Catalyst Romania’s Fund II. The round was also joined by Serbia-based South Central Ventures and Hungarian venture capital fund Lead Ventures, both of which have previously invested in the company. Founded in 2017, Leanpay is a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) and point-of-sale lending platform with over 120,000 customers across Slovenia, Romania and Hungary

North Macedonia said it was seeking further assistance from the EU on Tuesday to combat wildfires that continue to burn out of control in heatwave temperatures. “Unfortunately, new fires are constantly appearing due to the weather and strong winds that are causing us problems,” Stojanche Angelov, head of the country’s Centre for Crisis Management, said. Large wildfires in parts of North Macedonia this week destroyed and damaged homes, forced evacuations and claimed the life of an elderly resident in a village some 60 kilometres east of the capital Skopje.

Archaeologists in Czechia have found a hoard of buried weapons and jewellery dating to around 1600 BC, a rare discovery that could shed more light on life in central Europe during the Bronze Age. Researchers surveying a site in the town of Budyně nad Ohří stumbled upon the bronze artefacts, including eight axes and pieces of jewellery, from over 3,600 years ago. The site was first found a year ago by an archaeologist using a metal detector. A series of excavations since have unearthed eight arm rings, as many axes, two pins and one spearhead, all dating to the Bronze Age.

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