In the approaching days, Poland will hand over 4 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, making the Eastern European country the primary member of the NATO bloc to deliver warplanes to Kiev after months of requests.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, certainly one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, made the announcement on Thursday.
“We are able to confidently say that we’re sending MiGs to Ukraine,” Duda said at a press conference in Warsaw.
“We now have a dozen MiGs that we got within the 90s from East Germany [East Germany] they’re functional and play a job in defending our airspace.
“They’re at the top of their life, but they’re still operational.”
The president added that the primary 4 “fully operational” planes will be handed over to Ukraine in the approaching days. Additional aircraft will be delivered after “handling and prepared for handover”.
On Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his government could send its MiGs “inside the subsequent 4 to 6 weeks.”
Polish leaders had previously emphasized that sending fighter jets to Ukraine would happen only as part of a bigger international coalition.
Slovakia also expressed its willingness to deliver the MiG-29 to Kiev, but kept away from announcing the choice.
Each nations are lobbying other NATO members to follow suit.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Thursday that the talk on sending fighter jets was ongoing.
“That is something we’re talking about in a gaggle of allied countries. That is an amazing wish from Ukraine,” she said.
Ukrainian Air Force pilots are familiar with Soviet-era MiG-29s and will put them into service instantly without having to spend months learning learn how to fly them, as could be the case with other foreign aircraft.
The Polish Air Force reportedly has 28 combat aircraft that it has been using since 1989. Asked last week what number of planes Warsaw could deliver to Kiev, the pinnacle of the president’s office, Pawel Szrot, said it might “actually” be lower than 14.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called on leading NATO nations, including the US and UK, to send modern fighter jets to Kiev to defend Ukrainian cities from deadly Russian missile and drone strikes.
President Biden in January flatly rejected the concept of giving Ukraine F-16s.
For the reason that start of the war in February 2022, the US has provided Ukraine with vital military assistance value $27.5 billion, including equipment and ammunition.
But based on Latest York Times reportseven that might not be enough, given the furious rate at which Kiev’s forces defending the important thing city of Bakhmut are using up ammunition.
US and European officials have warned Kiev that firing hundreds of artillery rounds a day on the enemy is unsustainable and will potentially jeopardize Ukraine’s planned counter-offensive to retake territories controlled by Moscow’s forces.
The US and UK are preparing to deliver hundreds of artillery shells and rockets this spring to replenish Ukraine’s dwindling stockpile, while European Union countries are pooling their resources to supply and buy more munitions.
But a U.S. defense official, chatting with the Times on condition of anonymity, warned that Ukraine’s NATO allies should not have enough ammunition of their stockpiles to fulfill the ever-increasing demand, and that it will take months, and maybe years.
The Ukrainian leadership has decided to take a stand and defend Bakhmut, whom Moscow’s regular forces and Wagner Group mercenaries have been attempting to capture for months, at the associated fee of lack of life on either side.
The Ukrainian military is facing a key dilemma: to carry Bakhmut in any respect costs, and thus threaten a counter-offensive, or to permit the enemy to capture a strategically necessary city that would open the best way for Vladimir Putin’s troops to additional territorial gains.
Experts are divided on Bakhmut’s importance, with some saying Ukrainian forces are depleting Russian reserves in a front-line “meat grinder” to purchase Kiev more time before a counter-offensive, and others warning that Ukraine itself may run out of troops and ammunition to proceed the fight .
With postal wires