https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-promise-to-supply-fighter-jets-to-ukraine-gets-grounded/
March 1, 2022
Ukrainian authorities claimed on Monday that they
would be receiving planes from several EU partners.
Poland won’t send fighter jets to Ukraine, the country
said Tuesday — the latest in a series of similar denials from EU countries
that have highlighted early confusion about what the bloc’s new military
support for Kyiv will actually encompass.
In addition to Poland, the Bulgarian and Slovakian
governments have also recently ruled out the delivery of military aircraft to
Ukraine. Yet at the same time, a Ukrainian official was claiming as recently as Monday that Ukrainian pilots had left the country to
pick up planes donated by EU countries.
Such conflicting remarks peppered the rocky first few days of the EU’s attempt to serve as a logistics coordinator for the delivery of military aid to Ukraine as it faces down a surging Russian invasion. In a historic move, the EU on Sunday said it would take a much more assertive role in funneling weapons and other military equipment from its members to Ukraine, even using €450 million of EU funding to help finance the effort.
On Monday evening, a Ukrainian official said pilots had arrived in Poland to receive military aircraft from EU
partners. The planes in question were Soviet-era jets like the Mig-29, which
Ukrainian pilots are already trained to fly. The Ukrainian parliament even put
specifics on the donations: Europe, it tweeted, was sending 70 fighter planes in total, including 28 MiG-29s from
Poland, 12 from Slovakia and 16 from Bulgaria, along with 14 Su-25s from
Bulgaria.
Not so, the countries said.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov explained that
his country had a deficit of serviceable aircraft and parts and did not have
sufficient fighter jets to guard its own airspace, let alone to lend jets to
Ukraine, a Bulgarian official told POLITICO. A spokesperson for the Slovakian
Ministry of Defense on Tuesday also denied any donation: “Slovakia will not
provide fighter jets to Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
Polish President Andrzej Duda joined the chorus on
Tuesday. Speaking alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the Łask
Air Base in Poland, Duda said his country is “not going to send any jets to the
Ukrainian airspace,” arguing “that would open a military interference in the
Ukrainian conflict.”
NATO, Duda stressed, is not a party to Russia’s war in
Ukraine — a key caveat the military alliance has tried to make despite
several of its members supplying the Ukrainian military with lethal arms while
also hitting Moscow with crippling sanctions.
However, Duda’s comments were not entirely clear. He
did not specify whether his denial was referring to Poland not sending jets
operated by Polish pilots into Ukraine — which would indeed mean an open
military interference in the war — or whether his rejection referred more
broadly to any potential delivery of Polish fighter jets to Ukraine.
Hours later, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki
issued a more direct denial.
“Poland doesn’t have such plans,” he said at a press
conference.
Talk about European fighter jet deliveries was sparked
by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who went off-script during a press
conference on Sunday to reference the possibility.
“We are going to supply … even fighter jets” to
Ukraine, he said, adding that some EU countries had the “kinds of planes” that
Ukraine needed to fight off Russia. Borrell even suggested such planes could be
funded by EU money.
On Monday, however, Borrell had to publicly backtrack:
At another press conference, he acknowledged that even though fighter jets were
“part of the request for aid that we received from Ukraine,” the EU did not
have sufficient financial means to pay for those airplanes, which would have to
be donated “bilaterally” by individual EU countries instead.
Such conflicting remarks peppered the rocky first few days of the EU’s attempt to serve as a logistics coordinator for the delivery of military aid to Ukraine as it faces down a surging Russian invasion. In a historic move, the EU on Sunday said it would take a much more assertive role in funneling weapons and other military equipment from its members to Ukraine, even using €450 million of EU funding to help finance the effort.
Not so, the countries said.