(MENAFN- UkrinForm) Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said that Ukraine's 'wish list' for Western-supplied weapons includes fighter jets. He said this in an interview with cnn on Wednesday, January 25, Ukrinform reports.
'I sent a wish list card to Santa Claus last year, and fighter jets also [were] included in this wish list,' Reznikov said.
At the same time, he said that his government's first priority was air defense systems so it could prevent Russia from carrying out air and missile strikes.
'We have to close our sky, to defend our sky. That's priority number one. After that, we need to get more armed vehicles, tanks, artillery systems, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), et cetera, et cetera. We have people, but we need weaponry,' Reznikov said.
Quoting Winston Churchill, he said, 'Give us the tools, we will finish the job.'
Reznikov noted that Ukraine would use Western main battle tanks as an 'iron fist' to break through Russian lines and liberate occupied territory.
'We will use them as a kind of metal fist, or iron fist, to break through the defense line of our enemy,' he said.
The minister added that Ukraine should continue its counteroffensive campaign in different directions for the liberation of its temporarily occupied territories.
Reznikov added that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry is reforming its 'old Soviet-fashioned corruption' weapons procurement system to a modern, NATO-style system. In particular, he said that he asked Ukraine's relevant parliamentary committees on Tuesday, January 24, to help write new legislation to modernize the government's system of procuring weapons and army supplies.
'We have to move forward' in tackling corruption, he added, because Ukraine will continue to need Western support after the war.
'They will support us if we really show them that we stop [the] Soviet-era corruption systems in our country [and] we become a new, modernized, civilized, European country,' Reznikov told CNN.