NATO Ally Responds to Rumors of Secret F-16 Combat Mission in Ukraine

NATO ally Romania has dismissed an unverified report that an F-16 fighter aircraft took off from a base in the country to bomb Russian forces in occupied southern Ukraine, as the approaching transfer of dozens of the American-made fighter jets to Kyiv prompts mounting speculation and rumor.

The Ukraine Front Lines X—formerly known as Twitter—account appears to be the source of the latest false claim regarding the F-16s, which are being prepared to be sent to Ukraine by NATO nations to help Kyiv bolster its air force.

Ukraine Front Lines reported, without providing any evidence, that Russia's General Staff of the Armed Forces reported to the Security Council of Russia that an F-16C operating out of a Romanian air force base close to the Black Sea port city of Constanța "carried out an air strike" on a Russian troop concentration in the partially-occupied southern Ukrainian Kherson region.

"They were very frightened in Moscow," the account claimed. "While there is no possibility to locate F-16 at bases yet in Ukraine, ready-made bases and ground personnel of allies are used."

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

The Romanian Defense Ministry quickly disputed the report on its X account.

"We are alerting you to fake news that appeared on an account from the X platform, which claims that an F-16C aircraft took off from the 86th Air Base in Constanța on Saturday and bombed, at 03:22, a group of forces of the Russian Federation near Kherson," the ministry wrote.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat also told Newsweek early on Tuesday that the report was false.

There has been no evidence that F-16s are yet operating in Ukrainian skies, nor even that the first batches of the aircraft have arrived on Ukrainian soil.

Speculation, though, has been rife, especially amid the shooting down of several Russian aircraft over frontline areas in recent months. Experts told Newsweek earlier this month that Ukraine's use of a mobile Patriot surface-to-air missile battery is a more likely explanation.

As with other Western-provided weapons systems, Kyiv and its partners may wish to conceal the arrival of the F-16s to ensure an element of surprise when they are first used against Russian forces. Daniel Rice, a former special adviser to Ukraine's commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhnyi, told Newsweek in December: "Russian forces should learn 'the hard way' when Ukraine fields a new weapon."

Ukrainian pilots and ground crews are still undergoing training abroad on the platform under the guidance of a multinational NATO coalition. The first F-16 fighters are expected to be transferred to Ukrainian control in the coming weeks or months.

Ihnat said this month that six advanced Ukrainian pilots are currently undergoing training in Denmark and are expected to join the fight in the spring. An intermediate group training in the U.S. is expected to be ready to fly missions later this year, while the least experienced group training in the U.K. may not be ready until 2025.

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