MILAN — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Sweden on Wednesday to discuss a “defense export,” according to the Swedish government, widely expected to be related to a potential deal involving Gripen fighter jets.
Zelenskyy met with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Oct. 22 in Linköping, home to the defense aerospace company Saab, which manufactures the aircraft.
“A strong and capable Ukraine is a key priority for Sweden, and we will continue to make sure it can fight back against Russia’s aggression,” Kristersson wrote on his X social media platform.
Stockholm has been touting the possibility of sending the Gripen to Ukraine for over a year. At the Singapore Air Show in February 2024, Saab officials confirmed to Defense News that Ukrainian pilots had successfully tested the jets in the fall of 2023.
At the time, the Swedish government emphasized that any decision regarding the transfer of the Gripen JAS39 was contingent on Ukraine’s accession to NATO. That has turned out to be a prickly question, in part delayed by Hungary, which did not ratify the protocol for the war-torn country’s accession.
“We are fully aligned with what has been put forward by the Swedish government on this matter — we also continue to work to support and work with our Hungarian partners in the best way we can,” Mikael Franzén, chief marketing officer at Saab, told Defense News on the sidelines of the 2024 airshow.
“We expect that if such a decision was granted approval by the Swedish government, it would be a fairly rapid process to send the aircraft to Ukraine. … We are moving in the right direction currently,” he added.
Twenty months later, no deal has been finalized and Ukraine is still not a member of the military alliance.
In terms of Western-provided jets, Ukraine currently relies on the U.S.-made F-16s and the French Mirage 2000 aircraft.
In July 2024, then-Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Tobias Billström said Ukraine had postponed the Gripen option, at least until the F-16s were received and implemented into operations.
“Kyiv has concluded that simultaneously having both F16s and Gripens would be too much,” he said in an interview with Voice of America at the time. The country began flying the F-16s for operations the following month.
According to Jussi Halmetoja, a former Gripen pilot and air operations advisor for Saab, it takes on average between four to six months to train a pilot to use the Gripen JAS39 for limited operations, including air-to-air and beyond-visual range combat.
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.
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