By Simon Johnson
LINKOPING, Sweden (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was visiting Sweden on Wednesday to discuss a possible export deal with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at Swedish defence industry group Saab.
Saab is the maker of the JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet, the GlobalEye surveillance aircraft, missile systems, anti-tank infantry weapons and other equipment.
Zelenskiy landed in Linkoping, where Saab produces the Gripens, just before 1100 GMT, after having made a stop in Norway earlier in the day.
“We will discuss a major possible Swedish export deal,” Kristersson told Swedish radio.
Kristersson later told public broadcaster SVT he and Zelenskiy would be “looking at one of the world’s absolute best fighter jets”, but stopped short of saying whether a Gripen deal was on the day’s agenda.
He has previously said that simply donating Gripens to Ukraine is currently not on the cards. This would however not preclude an export order to boost Ukrainian air defences over the longer term.
The possibility of supplying Gripens to Ukraine has been under consideration over the past two years but was put on hold to allow Kyiv to focus on the introduction of American-made F-16 fighters that it began deploying last August.
Nonetheless, Ukrainian pilots have been in Sweden to test the Gripen and help smooth any eventual export of the jets.
A Saab spokesperson said it was a big day for the company. “It shows that there is a strong belief in the competence and … capacity that Saab has in the area of fighter planes,” he said.
The Swedish government said in a statement Zelenskiy and Kristersson would present news regarding defence exports at a joint press conference.
A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
Kristersson said this month that he and Zelenskiy had discussed Kyiv’s interest in Gripen at a meeting of European leaders in Copenhagen.
Zelenskiy was in Oslo to meet Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Norway’s government said.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, Niklas Pollard, Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Clarence Fernandez and Alison Williams)
