Poland will deliver a first batch of four MiG-29 fighter-bombers to Ukraine, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced on Thursday, which will be the first such delivery by a NATO member.
“In the coming days, we will first transfer (…) four fully operational aircraft to Ukraine,” President Duda told reporters. For two months, President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urgently calling for planes. Because Ukrainian combat aviation cannot compete with its Russian counterpart, which probably has ten times more combat aircraft while the Ukrainian hangars are emptying.
In the first weeks of the war, kyiv had already lost more than twenty combat aircraft. Impossible to relaunch an offensive in the spring without regenerating your fleet. The four MiG 29s supplied by Poland will not upset the balance. ” MiGs will not solve the problems, we need F-16s. But the MiGs will help strengthen our capabilities “Reacted the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat.
This transfer perhaps represents a breach opened in the wall of Western reluctance. Since the beginning of the Russian aggression the red lines fall after the others, the mechanics are known: it is first a “firm no”, no for the tanks, no for the planes, then a “maybe” and finally a green light. The Ukrainians are eyeing the American F-16s, a multipurpose aircraft, available in large numbers in Europe. Pentagon strategists argue for this solution, but the Polish decision “ do not change anything to the American refusal to deliver fighter jets for the moment, assured John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House.
Ukraine’s allies want to keep the conflict under control, and they fear that the arrival of Western planes will increase the risk of strikes on Russian territory.