Slovakia has said it will send its Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine along with Poland, increasing the west’s military contributions to bolstering the country’s air defenses against a barrage of Russian missile strikes.
Prime Minister Eduard Heger said in a tweet on Friday that his country would send 13 MiG-29s to Ukraine, following Warsaw’s announcement that it would send at least four of its own aircraft. The planes will be used as additional aircraft and spare parts for Ukraine’s existing MiG fleet, but they do not meet Kiev’s demand for Western fighter jets, such as the US-made F-16s.
Before this week’s announcements, both Warsaw and Bratislava had said delivery of MiG-29 jets could only be made as part of a “coalition” of Western nations, and backed by commitments from other NATO states to replace those jets by western aircraft. .
Washington welcomed the announcements from both Poland and Slovakia, but the White House said it had not changed its mind about whether or not to send F-16s. The Biden administration has argued that it would be too expensive to send them and that they would take too long to reach the battlefield.
“It has no impact or effect whatsoever on our own sovereign decision making when it comes to F-16s,” Kirby said Friday.
Ukrainian forces already know how to use the MiG-29s, he said, and the US expects them to “complement the fighter capabilities that the Ukrainian air force has at their disposal.”
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said the MiG-29s would bolster their capabilities, but added that such Soviet-designed aircraft “were not an effective weapon against terror weapons. Their outdated missiles, radars and radar on board of airplanes may not be very effective”.
Mykola Bielieskov, an analyst at Ukraine’s National Institute of Strategic Studies but speaking in a personal capacity, said the Polish and Slovak MiGs had better communication systems but were in some ways less capable than the Ukrainian MiGs, which had already been modified to handle certain weapons supplied by the West. rockets.
Polish officials hope their announcement and Slovakia’s will be an “intermediate step” to convince Washington and other countries with more advanced fighter jets to change their minds. Several European countries have F-16s, but sending them to Ukraine also requires US approval.
A Polish official said that while there was no explicit promise from Washington for new aircraft to replace the MiGs being sent to Ukraine, Poland expected Washington to be more favorable to its longer-term request for new US-made jets . The official added that F-16s, if deployed to Ukraine, could play an important role in the defense of the country as current air defenses struggle to shoot down all incoming Russian missiles.
Reacting to the Polish and Slovak announcements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that they illustrated an increased “direct involvement” of Western countries in the war. He downplayed the impact of the extra MiGs delivered to Ukraine, saying they “couldn’t affect the outcome” of the conflict.
“Of course during the ‘special military operation’ all this equipment will be destroyed,” added Peskov. “There is a sense that these countries are in the process of disposing of old and unnecessary equipment.”
Slovakia had also reached an agreement with the US on supplies of military equipment worth about $700 million, the government said. Arms deliveries to Ukraine are reimbursed by the EU — in the case of Slovakia up to €200 million.
The Slovak MiG decision comes at a tense moment in domestic politics and was met with strong opposition in the Slovak parliament. Heger heads a caretaker government after his government lost a parliamentary vote of confidence in December. The country will hold early parliamentary elections in September.
Heger’s decision was facilitated by Poland taking the first step, but it was risky because Heger bypassed parliament and “provided perfect ammunition for part of the radical opposition in Slovakia to take to the streets,” said Milan Nič , senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
In recent weeks, opposition lawmakers had insisted that an acting prime minister did not have the power to hand over fighter jets without the approval of parliament. “For Poland this is quite a consensual decision, while in Slovakia it was the exact opposite,” said Nič. In Bratislava, “this comes at a very fragile time, not only for the government but also for the entire pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian camp.”