Europe

Poland supplies fighter jets to Ukraine

Poland has long been open to the delivery of combat aircraft: the President has now announced that the first jets are to be handed over in a few days.

Poland has announced the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine. This was announced by President Andrzej Duda in a press conference with his Czech counterpart Petr Pavel. Accordingly, four MiG-29 jets are to be handed over to Ukraine in the coming days. There are also plans to deliver more jets, which, however, still have to be serviced. The country’s leadership made a corresponding decision, and the government then passed a resolution.

Duda further said that the Polish Air Force currently has about a dozen MiG-29s, which were taken over from East Germany’s stocks in the early 1990s. “They continue to be in full service as working MiGs for our anti-aircraft defence.” The machines handed over to Ukraine are to be replaced by modern fighter jets, which Poland ordered from South Korea and the USA.

The delivery of the jets had already been indicated in the past few weeks – albeit not as quickly. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday that jets could be delivered to Ukraine in the next four to six weeks. Poland had also previously signaled that it did not want to deliver the combat aircraft alone. It was initially unclear whether another state would join the delivery. Above all, a delivery through Slovakia was discussed beforehand.

USA had previously refused delivery

Poland owns around 30 MiG jets in total, which were still manufactured in the Soviet Union. Poland received 22 of the jets from Germany in 2003. The Federal Republic still had these jets from old GDR stocks. If one of these aircraft were to be handed over, the federal government would have to agree.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Defense told t-online on Thursday that Poland had not submitted an application for the jets to be exported. It can therefore be assumed that the aircraft that are now to be delivered to the Ukraine do not come from German stocks. In addition, the spokeswoman announced that the federal government has not yet received any application from Poland for the transfer of further jets.

Shortly after the start of the Russian war of aggression, Poland had proposed delivering MiG-29s to Ukraine. At the time, however, the US Department of Defense considered this to be too risky because Russia could have viewed it as an escalation. As a neighboring country to Ukraine, Poland is particularly affected by the consequences of the war.

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