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The Mirage 2000 is “significantly inferior” to modern Russian aircraft, the defense conglomerate has said
The Mirage 2000 fighter jets that France has delivered to Ukraine will be swiftly destroyed by the Russian military if Kiev uses them near the front line, Moscow’s defense conglomerate Rostec has said.
On Thursday, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced that Kiev had received the first batch of fourth generation Mirage 2000-5 aircraft, which the country’s president Emmanuel Macron promised to supply last summer. The jets will be flown by Ukrainian pilots who have undergone training in France, Lecornu said.
A representative of Rostec said “if attempts to deploy them for dogfights or airstrikes near the front line are made, they will be promptly shot down” when asked to comment on the prospects of Kiev’s use of the French warplane by Tass news agency on Saturday.
According to the representative, the Mirage 2000 is “an obsolete aircraft that is significantly inferior to modern Russian fighter jets.”
Just like the US-designed F-16s which were provided to Ukraine by its Western backers in August, the French planes can only be used by Kiev in the “deep rear,” Tass’s interlocutor insisted.
“As a fighter jet, the F-16 has turned out to be much worse than expected,” Rostec’s representative stressed.
The much-hyped delivery of the US-designed jets has failed to make a significant impact on the battlefield. Kiev lost its first F-16 during its maiden mission in early September 2024. A Ukrainian MP later claimed that the plane had been mistakenly shot down by a Patriot air defense battery, which was also donated by the West. There have been very few reports of the combat use of the F-16s since then.
On Thursday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the arrival of the Mirage 2000s and additional F-16s from the Netherlands, claiming that “the Ukrainian sky is becoming more secure.” The country’s leader Vladimir Zelensky also thanked Macron for providing the jets. “France’s president keeps his word, and we appreciate it,” he wrote on X.
Moscow has warned repeatedly that supplies of weapons to Kiev by the US and EU nations will not prevent Russia from achieving its military goals in the conflict, but will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct confrontation with NATO.
