An EU plan to send fighter jets to Ukraine appears to be falling apart as each country that was reportedly going to deliver the planes is now denying involvement.
The plan announced Monday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel was meant to give Ukraine old Russian-made MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter jets, which Ukraine’s pilots are already trained to fly. Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia were reportedly lined up to transfer the planes, but officials from each country denied the plan.
“Slovakia will not provide fighter jets to Ukraine,” the Slovak Foreign Ministry told Newsweek on Tuesday. Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said Monday that Bulgaria doesn’t have enough warplanes to guard its own airspace, let alone enough to send to Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukraine’s parliament claimed Poland planned on giving Ukraine MiG-29 fighters, but Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denied the plans. “Poland doesn’t have such plans,” Mateusz said on Tuesday.
An unnamed EU diplomat told Politico that some EU countries were “outraged” after Borrel announced that the bloc would be giving Ukraine warplanes since his announcement came shortly after Russia’s nuclear forces were put on high alert.
“Making such announcements on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to put his nuclear deterrence force on ‘high alert’ risks to escalate the situation further,” the diplomat said.
While the EU isn’t sending fighter jets, the US and its European allies have been busy pledging to send new weapons to Ukraine, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles. Ukraine has asked for the Western powers to establish a “no-fly zone,” but the request has been ruled out by the US and NATO since it would mean direct military confrontation with Russia.
I really dont understand this idea (as it least has to have some resemblance of a practical offering). Let’s give Ukraine fighters that will be shoot down easily by s-400 & s-500 SAMs while inflaming tensions with EU/NATO members. Great idea y’all! Unless the West is trying to demonstrate that RF dont hold air superiority?
Russia most likely have already destroyed all airfield, so from where can they take off? Besides Russian planes are far superior, hardly a match for most NATO planes.
it was all just hearsay
It was brought up for two purposes:
1) To show NATO was “doing something” to “help Ukraine” – when in fact there’s nothing NATO can do.
2) It was a lame attempt to get Poland into the war by hosting the aircraft – as they are doing with Ukrainian Air Force jets that fled Ukraine the first day of the war – thereby tempting Russia to strike those airfields, allowing Poland to involve Article 5 of the NATO Charter. Russia is unlikely to fall for that.
But it does show that some people in the US and NATO administrations are desperately trying to get a war going with Russia.
if they wanted a war, they’d have a war
Just nearly drowned myself with my water bottle. Was listening to Pepe Escobar on Richard Medhurst’s channel. They were discussing Western journalists and Medhurst put up a tweet by Richard Engel who said something along the lines of why doesn’t the US attack Russian convoys or whatever.
Medhurst asked Pepe why aren’t these guys the first ones into Ukraine to join the fight?
Pepe replied, “Why don’t they drop Engel in the front line in Kiev with some Azov Battalion guys and let him meet the Chechens?”
I cracked up completely.
IMO any country supplying weapons to Ukraine is defacto at war with Russia , you givesomone aweapon to kill someone else you are complicit in that death.
Reminds me of Niki Haley’s show and tell at the UN. Blaming Iran because someone used their weaponry. But I’m sure she wouldn’t agree with your assessment. We are exceptional after all.
maybe Russia shouldn’t have started the war
The war was really started by Biden when he responded that excluding Ukraine from NATO was a non-starter. I bet you that should they have a choice now, they would not take such an arrogant attitude.
NATO was NOT going to admit Ukraine and use it as a base of operations to invade Russia. Put down the Putini: Vodka and Kool-Aid
It wasn’t necessarily about “invading” Russia, although sponsoring a coup in a country right next door isn’t the best way to win friends and influence people.
When the US withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty in 2019 and started putting missiles within surprise first strike range in Poland, that raised the stakes. The possibility of them putting surprise first strike nukes even closer than Poland was a legitimate concern, easily on par with the Soviet Union sticking missiles 90 miles off the US coast in Cuba.
But when the Russians brought it up, instead of working out a deal, the US just pulled the old dance around and yell “we’re the only remaining superpower and we get to do ANYTHING WE WANT” routine.
Which doesn’t excuse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but does give reason to believe that it was avoidable if the US could be bothered to be as reasonable as, say, Vladimir Putin. Doesn’t seem like that high a bar, but the US continually fails to get over it, as any Serb, Iraqi, Afghan, Libyan, or Syrian will tell you.
so if NATO was not going to invade Russia, NATO expansion was not a threat.
Even the moderator cannot get sense into your head.
You are clueless.
All I need to know about you: you believe NATO was going to use Ukraine to invade Russia
Maybe the US and NATO should negotiate instead of being paper tigers and pushing this conflict to happen…the onus is on them, not Russia.
the onus is not on the invader?
Not you again. Try to follow the stages of the present situation, not go on as if the “start of the war” was somehow undesired by US∕NATO who goaded Russia for 8 years.
No provocation of course in the last thirty years especially recently.
Maybe, just maybe Europe isn’t suicidal. I could be wrong.
The utter propaganda hysteria of the MSM in the US and EU is sickening. These two entities wanted this. They care nothing about Ukraine, or its plight. They want to punish Russia at every turn no matter how ridiculous and criminal they act. The US looks weaker now than it has ever looked even after it crawled away from Afghanistan with tail in hand…
I’ve noticed that we suddenly care very deeply about innocent civilians being killed and all of the refugees fleeing to neighboring countries. Some how these were of no concern during our wars in the middle east and Libya. How many wedding parties and funerals did we bomb?
What a pity the Russians have already destroyed all the lovely gifts of the EU∕NATO friends.