US Wants East Europeans to Give Their MiGs to Ukraine, Will Give Them F-16s in Exchange

The war for control of Ukraine will be waged in the air, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told U.S. lawmakers Saturday, and therefore, he implored them to give him planes to keep Russia at bay. The U.S. is urging Poland and other Eastern European countries to give their Russian-made fighter jets to Ukraine and is working on a plan to backfill the planes they give up with U.S.F-16s.

One advantage of the Russian planes is that Ukrainian pilots are already trained to fly them. 

The other reason is that these planes can be deployed far more quickly. One U.S. official said the administration has told Poland it should make Russian-made MiGs in its arsenal available because these planes would not require U.S. permission to be transferred.

Conversely, any effort to send newly manufactured planes to Ukraine could be hampered by several years’ worth of paperwork with defense contractors.

Further, the transfer of American-made F-16 fighter jets from NATO allies would require congressional notification.

Because Ukrainian pilots are not trained on American planes, the fighter jets would not be immediately helpful to them, even if they were able to obtain them sooner.

Poland has 21 single-seat MiG-29s and 6 twin-seat MiG-29s, according to Janes World Air Forces.

Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the U.S. would give the go-ahead to the transfer of the planes to Ukraine and is already talking with Poland about backfilling its aircraft inventory, Poland has not yet decided to move ahead with the transfers. In a tweet over the weekend, the chancellery of the Polish prime minister called a story stating that Poland would give Ukraine MiG-29s in exchange for U.S.-made F-16s was “fake news.” 

And whether Poland would turn over its entire inventory of these planes — or even whether they’re all in working condition — isn’t clear yet, either.

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussed the source of Poland’s hesitation with CBS News.

“If you have a Polish aircraft and you put a Ukrainian pilot in there, and that pilot then flies the aircraft into Ukraine to fight the Russians, the Russians can plausibly argue that Poland has now become a co-belligerent, since it’s launching aircraft from its soil into Ukraine,” Cancian said. “So the Poles are very, very nervous about that and want to be very careful that this does not make them vulnerable to Russian counter-actions.”

Source: CBS

The Week:

One of the primary concerns for Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia is that they don’t draw retaliation from the Kremlin or draw NATO into a direct military conflict with Russia. So the MiGs couldn’t be stored on NATO soil, and “it isn’t clear if Ukraine would be able to safely house and service them in the long run, given the warfare on its territory,” The Associated Press reports.

“Another question to resolve would be how to deliver the planes to Ukraine,” because Polish pilots can’t fly them into the country and having Ukrainian pilots come pick them up would pose similar risks.

“There is also an F-16 production backlog, which means the countries that potentially give away their MiGs and Su fighters to Ukraine would need to wait for the backfill for some time,” AP reports.

To make things even “more complicated,” the Times adds, “many of those fighters are promised to Taiwan — where the United States has greater strategic interests.”

“I can’t speak to a timeline, but I can just tell you we’re looking at it very, very actively,” Blinken said Sunday.