Iran Press/ America: The move was 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, Politico reported.
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 Russian military operation. In a historic move, the EU on Sunday said it would take a much more assertive role in funneling weapons and other military equipment, including fighter jets, 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 earlier promises not to leave Ukraine alone, a country that knew itself as an ally of the US and NATO.
In another development on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden once again rejected direct US military participation on the ground in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that his country had been left on its own to fight Russia.
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