Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday his country is ready to provide its MiG fighter jets to Ukraine if the U.S. leads a wider coalition for transfers of aircraft to the war-torn country.
“Today we can talk about transferring our MiG [jets] as part of a wider coalition, and we are ready for that,” Morawiecki said, according to a Reuters report from Warsaw. “Poland can only be a part of a much larger coalition here, a coalition with the United States as a leader,” he said.
The prime minister’s comments come a day after Polish President Andrzej Duda said in an interview with Sky News that modern fighter jets should be sent to Ukraine in due course to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s invasion.
“They’ll also need modern planes, fighter jets in the future. Everything that will allow them to have a technological upper hand over the Russian armed forces is valuable right now,” Duda told the news outlet.
The Polish president also said that older, Soviet-era Polish MiG-29 fighter jets could be sent earlier, as these are aircraft that Ukrainian pilots can operate, given this is already the sort of equipment they fly.
“So donating that equipment to Ukraine in the first place will already provide support to Ukraine because they will counterbalance the Russians to a certain degree,” Duda said.
Duda’s statement comes less than a week after he signaled Poland may not be able to deliver Western fighter jets to Ukraine, noting that his country has fewer than 50 jets.
