Last year, days after the start of the war in Ukraine, Poland announced its willingness to donate its MiG-29 Fulcrum, inherited from its communist past, to the Ukrainian Air Force. And Washington appeared to support that initiative…which ultimately failed.
In fact, not wanting to take sole responsibility for delivering the MiG-29s to Kiev, the Polish authorities initially wanted to send them to Ramstein Air Base. [Allemagne] then leaving it up to the United States to deliver them to the Ukrainians. In addition, they asked the latter to provide him with used combat aircraft equipped with “equivalent operational capabilities”. The American government, however, hesitated.
“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the United States government’ departing from a US/NATO base in Germany and flying into disputed airspace with Russia over Ukraine is a matter of serious concern to the whole NATO,” John had indeed explained to Kirby, spokesman for the Pentagon at the time.
Since then, many taboos on arms supplies to Ukraine have been lifted… Like that on main battle tanks, for example. However, and despite multiple requests [et insistantes] From Kiev, the transfer of Western fighter jets is still not on the agenda, although some countries such as the Netherlands, Great Britain and France are not opposed in principle. But that of MiG-29 could succeed in the end.
Thus, on March 9, during an interview with CNN, Polish President Andrzej Duda raised the issue of delivering MiG-29s to Kiev.
“We are ready to provide the MiG-29s that are operational and currently serving in our Air Force. I’m sure that Ukraine would be ready to use them immediately because they already have pilots who can use them,” Duda said.
On the same day, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad issued a statement with the same content. “I think it’s time to make a decision,” he said via Facebook. “People are dying in Ukraine, we can really help them. There is no place for Slovak politics,” he continued, referring to the disposal of the 11 MiG-29s that Bratislava retired from service in September 2022.
He also spoke about it with his Polish counterpart Mariusz Błaszczak in Stockholm on the sidelines of a meeting of defense ministers from the member states of the European Union. And Warsaw would agree a priori to hand over its MiG-29s to Ukraine as part of a “joint process”.
On the Ukrainian side, it is estimated that the possible delivery of MiG-29 would be “good news” in that it would mean a further development of the issue of delivery of fighter jets by Kiev’s partner.
“The decision to deploy the aircraft will be made depending on their condition,” a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry said. “Any help with this kind of equipment is definitely good news for us because we can strengthen our fighting ability,” he pointed out. However, the priority for Kiev remains the procurement of western fighter-bombers. F-16 if possible.
In that regard, US officials confirmed this week that two Ukrainian fighter pilots are being trained at Tucson Air Force Base. [Arizona]. But training them on F-16s is out of the question at the moment, since Washington’s attitude towards supplying such equipment to Keiv has not changed.
This is a “routine activity as part of our military-to-military dialogue with Ukraine,” said one of the officials contacted by CNN. “The program includes examining how Ukrainian pilots conduct their mission planning and execution in flight simulators to determine how we can better advise the Ukrainian Air Force on how to use the capabilities that they have and that we have given them,” he said a second officer.