A Mikojan MIG-29GT fighter plane from Poland, last Monday in Krakow.OMAR MARQUES / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO (Europa Press)
Old Soviet planes to help Ukraine stop Russian aggression.
The Polish government announced this paradoxical military pirouette on Tuesday: it plans to transfer all its Soviet-made MiG-29 fighters to the base that the United States has in Ramstein (Germany), so that they can be put "immediately and at no cost" to arrangement of Ukraine's defense.
It is estimated that they add about 28 units.
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In return, Warsaw asks that used US aircraft of "a corresponding operational capacity" be delivered to them.
This was announced on social networks by the head of Polish Foreign Affairs, Zbigniew Rau, after his prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, denied on Monday that Poland had the intention of directly transferring these combat aircraft to Ukraine.
The gesture has caught Washington by surprise, as recognized by the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, the third authority in US diplomacy, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But he does attend to the aspirations of the United States and the United Kingdom in recent weeks, in which they have pressed for NATO countries that possess Soviet-made fighter planes (that is: in addition to Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia) make available to the Ukrainian air force.
It is a plea that Kiev has also joined on several occasions.
Warsaw thus changes its discourse in the face of intelligence reports that predict an intensification of the offensive by the Russian army now that the war is approaching its third week.
And he does so after days of refusing the loan, for fear that his decision would be seen as a
casus belli
by Vladimir Putin.
Poland also encourages the other countries to "do the same".
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that countries wishing to do so had Washington's permission.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launched a "desperate request for European countries to provide Russian-made aircraft" to fight Russian invaders during a video call with US lawmakers on Saturday.
He also asked that the United States stop buying Russian crude, a wish that was granted on Tuesday.
Congressmen have since pressed the Biden administration to facilitate the transfer of those fighter jets.
The interest that these fighters are one of the great symbols of the Cold War, and not others, lies in the fact that they are the aircraft with which the Ukrainian pilots have learned to fly.
Now it remains to be seen how the logistical difficulties involved in the operation will be overcome.
Poland, a NATO member, shares a border with Ukraine.
Nuland added on Tuesday in the Senate that Washington was also studying the possibility of placing some Patriot missile batteries in that Eastern European country.
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