Their faces are as youthful as their gazes are serious, their bodies clad in military outfits as discreet as they are silent. For the past few months, a handful of young Ukrainian pilots have been training for war in the hangars of an air base in southwest France, the name of which cannot be divulged for security reasons, between land and sea, forest winds and the scent of strawflowers.

This mid-June, for the first time since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the Air and Space Force opened the doors to this training program, which officially began in March. The recruits were hard at work. There were navigation charts to prepare for their mission of the day, they had to complete their flight hours in a simulator, and, on the tarmac, they took off for flights on a two-seater aircraft with an instructor.

No F-16s here, the fighter aircraft on which they are supposed to fly in Ukraine, but Alphajets, lined up under shelters near the runway. Thanks to Franco-Belgian cooperation, a handful of these twinjets have been made available. They are equipped with an instrument panel imitating that of the F-16. Belgian forces fly F-16s and, until 2018, had been trained on the base with these aircraft.

Placed in a 'bubble'

There were only 10 Ukrainian pilots present for the time being, according to the Air and Space Force. Some have never flown before, while others have experience on the L-39 Albatros, a Czech-made jet trainer. Since their arrival in France after several months in the UK, mostly to learn English, these Ukrainian soldiers have been placed "in a bubble," as one French officer put it. Even during this day's media visit, they were not allowed to talk to the press. Only their age – "between 21 and 23" – was communicated.

Their training on French soil is the result of a long process that began over a year ago, in May 2023, at a meeting of Kyiv's allies in Rammstein, Germany. It was the fruit of lengthy technical and sensitive discussions, aimed at reconciling the urgency of Ukrainian needs with the various operational constraints of Western staff, who have always had fleets of fighter aircraft tailored to the most exacting requirements.

For France, the challenge was twofold. On the one hand, like other allies – including the Americans – it had to make room for the Ukrainians in its training curriculum, which was severely bottlenecked by the training of its own pilots. On the other, France had to suspend at the last minute withdrawing its Alphajets from service. The French Air Force had decided to get rid of them in 2023, not including the aerobatics unit Patrouille de France, to opt for a more modern aircraft, the Pilatus PC-21.

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