More to follow, I guess. I imagine this is just symbolic...Fighter jets don't live long anywhere near the ground--to the point where they're of limited use~
Poland will deliver an initial batch of four Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Thursday, ramping up pressure on other NATO allies to make similar commitments.
The planes are in “full working order” and will be delivered in “the next few days,” Duda said at a news conference in Warsaw alongside his Czech counterpart, Petr Pavel. The delivery would mark the first time any of Ukraine’s NATO allies have delivered jets.
“We are literally sending these MiGs to Ukraine at this moment,” he said. Poland did not say how the planes would be delivered — whether flown by Polish or Ukrainian pilots, or disassembled and taken by truck or rail. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in Kyiv that the method of delivery was “highly secret information.”
Agreement to transfer the fighter jets marks a new level of Western aid to Ukraine, again crossing what Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has called the “Rubicons” of allied decision-making. In sometimes halting decisions, the West supplied short-range antiaircraft and antitank equipment to repel Russia’s initial invasion, before progressing to include heavy artillery, multiple-launch precision rockets and main battle tanks over the past year as battlefield conditions changed.
MSN
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Poland will deliver an initial batch of four Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Thursday, ramping up pressure on other NATO allies to make similar commitments.
The planes are in “full working order” and will be delivered in “the next few days,” Duda said at a news conference in Warsaw alongside his Czech counterpart, Petr Pavel. The delivery would mark the first time any of Ukraine’s NATO allies have delivered jets.
“We are literally sending these MiGs to Ukraine at this moment,” he said. Poland did not say how the planes would be delivered — whether flown by Polish or Ukrainian pilots, or disassembled and taken by truck or rail. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in Kyiv that the method of delivery was “highly secret information.”
Agreement to transfer the fighter jets marks a new level of Western aid to Ukraine, again crossing what Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has called the “Rubicons” of allied decision-making. In sometimes halting decisions, the West supplied short-range antiaircraft and antitank equipment to repel Russia’s initial invasion, before progressing to include heavy artillery, multiple-launch precision rockets and main battle tanks over the past year as battlefield conditions changed.