Poland Is Ready To Provide The US With All Its MiG-29s

A MiG-29 aircraft of the Polish Air Force fires flares during a performance at the air show in Radom on August 24, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

WARSAW, March 8 – Poland is ready to move all of its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and hand them over to the US, and is urging other NATO members that own the type of aircraft to do so, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

U.S. lawmakers on Monday urged the administration of President Joe Biden to facilitate the transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine from Poland and other NATO and Eastern European countries following a statement on Saturday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. More

“The authorities of the Republic of Poland … are prepared to immediately and free of charge deploy all of their MiG-29 jets at Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the government of the United States of America,” the ministry said.

“At the same time, Poland is asking the United States to provide us with used aircraft with appropriate operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions for the purchase of aircraft,” the report says.

Poland is backing Kyiv with defensive weapons but has said it will not send planes to Ukraine because it is not a direct party to the conflict between Ukraine, which is not a NATO ally, and Russia.

“… any decision on the supply of offensive weapons must be made by all of NATO and unanimously,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday at a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart in Oslo.

“That is why we are ready to give Ramstein our entire fleet of jet fighters, but we are not ready to take any steps on our own, because, as I said, we are not a party in this war,” he added.

Reporting by Anna Koper; Additional report by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Gareth Jones

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