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Romania has dismissed the information that the European F-16 Training Center (EFTC) has begun teaching Ukrainian pilots at the center’s sole base in Fetesti as “fake news.”
The Ministry of Defense, via its Inforadar website created to expose disinformation, has classified as fake a report distributed on the Telegram messaging application, bearing the stamp of the Romanian official gazette, which apparently describes the results of the training of Ukrainian pilots in 2024 in Romania.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the authors of the forgery copied text from a 2023 public activity report of the ministry available online and added “sloppily edited, incorrect, and presumably machine-translated from another language” texts suggesting that the training of Ukrainian pilots had already started at the EFTC.
The article was accompanied by a photo of a report circulated on Telegram, which states, among other things, that “the three F-16 cadets were not diligent enough in learning English and their sporting performance was impaired by obesity and excessive alcohol consumption.”
The ministry recalled that the graduation ceremony of the first class of EFTC pilots, composed exclusively of Romanian pilots, was held on July 26 at Borcea Air Base 86, near the Danube Bridge in Fetesti, and was attended by journalists.
The Romanian Ministry of Defense recalled that the European F-16 Training Center could be used by NATO allies and partner countries, including Ukraine, to train their pilots, but that so far no such training has taken place.