In The End Ukraine Will Not Receive Any NATO Fighter Jet

A Polish Air Force MiG-29 Fulcrum prepares for take off.

Not even one of +70 claimed fighter jets will be transferred by NATO to the Ukrainian Air Force.

During a joint appearance with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, at the Łask AB in Poland last Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denied the rumours, media reports and claims by various Ukrainian and EU lawmakers that the allies would be sending fighter aircraft to Ukraine: “NATO allies provide different types of military support: material, anti-tank weapons, air defense systems, and other types of military equipment for Ukraine, humanitarian aid and also financial support. But NATO is not to be part of the conflict, The alliance “is not going to send the troops into Ukraine or move planes into Ukrainian airspace.” 

The Polish President, added: “We are not sending our planes as this would translate into a military interference of the conflict in Ukraine (…) NATO is not a side of that conflict. We provide Ukraine with multilateral help, humanitarian aid primarily, but our jets do not fly to Ukraine right now.” The news was being circulated since Sunday after a suggestion was made by Alexandre Krauss, a senior adviser to the EU Parliament, who tweeted that European jets would arrive in Ukraine within one hour. The tweet has since been deleted – Air Force Times reported.

The EU also denied the comments that had been made earlier by Josep Borrel, the Spanish politician who is the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy as well as Vice-President of the European Commission that fighter jets were being prepared for delivery to Ukraine as part of package of military aid to the country.

There were some suggestions and crazy rumours that some Ukrainian pilots were already in Poland readying the jets for the transfer. The mass confusion increased even more once the Ukrainian Air Force claimed that the service would receive +70 aircraft.

Nonetheless, the transfer is not going to happen.

After both Bulgaria and Slovakia said they were not donating any jets to the Ukrainian Air Force, and Polish president alongside NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, said no planes would be transferred to Ukraine, the Polish Air Force made it clear, also on social media, that all the Polish Fulcrums would remain at home, flying with the Polish checkerboard.

 

About Jacek Siminski
Standing contributor for TheAviationist. Aviation photojournalist. Co-Founder of DefensePhoto.com. Expert in linguistics, Cold War discourse, Cold War history and policy and media communications.