(Kyiv) The United States has assured Kyiv that it has “no objection” to the transfer of Polish fighter jets to Ukraine, the Ukrainian foreign minister said on Saturday in a written message transmitted at AFP.
Posted at 4:52 p.m.
“The United States assured us that they had no objection to the transfer of the planes,” wrote Dmytro Kouleba, who met in the morning with American President Joe Biden, who is visiting Poland. “The ball is now in Poland’s court,” he added.
“We will study this issue in more detail in our conversations with our Polish colleagues to hear their position, but I want to be clear: Ukraine is in critical need of more fighter jets,” he continued.
“We need it to find a balance in the sky and stop the Russians from committing more war crimes, dropping more bombs on our cities, and killing more civilians,” he said, saying he hoped that this issue be “resolved as soon as possible”.
Kouleba and Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov spoke Saturday morning with the US President in Warsaw, on the sidelines of their meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
On March 8, visibly taking the United States by surprise, Poland announced that it was “ready to move without delay and free of charge all its Mig-29 planes to the Ramstein base (in Germany) and to make them available to the government. of the United States”, to be handed over to Ukraine.
GLEB GARANICH PHOTO, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Two Ukrainian Army Mig-29 fighters
Washington had initially judged that this offer was not “viable”. The next day, the Pentagon definitively rejected this proposal.
“We judge that the addition of aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is not likely to significantly change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force vis-à-vis Russian capabilities” in the air, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
In addition, “intelligence services believe that the transfer (of Mig-29 aircraft) to Ukraine could be perceived as a one-upmanship (to the conflict) and could lead to a significant Russian reaction which would increase the prospect of a military escalation. with NATO,” he said.