Previously, the time frame was four to six weeks. Now Poland wants to deliver the first fighter jets in the next few days.
The most important things at a glance
Suddenly everything should happen very quickly: Poland wants to deliver the first fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming days, President Andrzej Duda announced today at a press conference with his Czech counterpart Petr Pavel. At the beginning of the week, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that the first jets could be delivered in the next four to six weeks.
Ukraine had long wanted the West to supply fighter jets, well before Germany’s recent pledge for tanks. But what exactly can Ukraine expect now – and what can the jets do? An overview of the most important questions and answers:
How many fighter jets does Poland want to deliver?
Specifically, the deliveries are MiG fighter jets developed in the Soviet Union. Duda said on Thursday that four MiG-29s could be handed over to Ukraine in the coming days. Additional MiG-29s were currently being serviced and prepared for a later transfer. The country’s leadership made a corresponding decision, and the government then passed a resolution.
How many jets Poland will ultimately deliver is unclear at this point in time. The head of the Polish Presidential Office, Paweł Szrot, only said last Thursday that 14 units would definitely not be delivered. This figure corresponds to that of the Leopard tanks previously supplied by Poland.
In principle, the Polish demand is not new: Shortly after the start of the Russian invasion last year, the government in Warsaw had signaled its willingness to hand over aircraft. “Immediately and free of charge” they are willing to hand over all MiG jets to the USA so that the Americans can transfer the planes from the Ramstein military base to Ukraine. In return, Poland wants to buy used US jets with comparable capabilities. However, the United States rejected the proposal.
Which other states could join Poland?
The Polish government previously said that they only wanted to deliver the jets in conjunction with other countries. A spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Defense told t-online on Wednesday that initiating a delivery “is possible within the framework of a broad international coalition.” Looking at the weapons arsenals of the NATO countries, two countries could deliver more MiG jets: Slovakia and Bulgaria. While the Slovak Army is said to have 11 jets, Bulgaria has 14 of the jets at its disposal.
Slovakia’s Defense Minister Yaroslav Nad announced in February that his country could deliver 10 of the 11 jets to Ukraine. However, following a vote of no confidence last December, the current Slovakian government is only in office on an acting basis. It is still unclear whether such a delivery by an interim government is even covered by the constitution. Nad nonetheless pushed last week for his government to make a decision now. t-online has asked the Slovakian Ministry of Defense whether they want to be involved in the delivery.
On the other hand, there was a refusal from Bulgaria: At the moment, they don’t even have enough jets to protect their own airspace, a spokesman for President Kiril Petkov recently told the “Politico” news portal.
What is the difficulty of such a delivery?
First of all, there is a problem with the delivery itself. Should Western pilots penetrate Ukrainian airspace with the jets, Russia could see this as NATO’s direct entry into the Ukraine war. This is probably one of the reasons why the US government rejected Poland’s first proposal last year.
Another possibility would be that Ukrainian pilots receive the jets in the NATO countries, put their own badges on them there and then fly them to their home country themselves. But that would also be risky from a NATO perspective. “That would mean making your territory available to a party in the conflict,” military expert Carlo Masala from the Bundeswehr University in Munich told DW. The most likely is therefore a covert delivery, in which it is not apparent how the planes got into the country in the first place.
