Polish President Andrzej Duda announced Thursday that Warsaw will send Ukraine 4 Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets within days.
Duda told reporters: “In the first stage, we will transfer 4 fully operational planes to Ukraine in the coming days. Additional planes are currently being prepared and maintained, and they are likely to be transferred successively.”
“So we can say that we are regarding to send these MiGs to Ukraine,” he continued, noting that Poland currently has more than 10 MiGs inherited from the former German Democratic Republic.
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“These MiGs are still in service with the Polish Air Force. They are in their last years of operation, but the majority of them are still fully operational,” Duda said.
The White House commented on the Polish announcement, saying that Warsaw’s move “does not change” the US position once morest sending planes to Ukraine.
Kiev had repeatedly asked the West to provide it with aircraft, to be used in the war that Russia has been waging once morest it for more than a year.
The MiGs, which will be transferred to Ukraine, will be replaced by the South Korean F-50, which Poland bought, and then by the American F-35.
larger alliance
And Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said earlier Thursday that Poland wants to transfer “MiG-29” aircraft to Ukraine “within the framework of a larger coalition of countries.”
In response to a question regarding the member states of this alliance, Blaszczak referred to Slovakia, but added: “Of course we are open to others. We certainly want to run our activities within the framework of an alliance.”
Last year, Poland’s neighbor Slovakia announced that it wanted to discuss sending MiG-29s to help compensate for losses in Ukraine’s existing stocks, but no final decisions have been made in this regard since then.
Duda’s announcement came following talks with his Czech counterpart Peter Pavel in Poland, who was a general in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Likewise, the Polish President’s statements came following the Minister of Defense announced earlier that Polish intelligence had dismantled a Russian spy network.
“It is a spy group that collects information for those who attacked Ukraine,” Blaszczak told Polish public radio.
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