Poland’s ‘surprise’ MiG-29 offer for Ukraine not ‘tenable,’ US says

WASHINGTON: After several days of discussions around a fighter jet swap that would see Poland give its MiG-29 fleet to Ukraine in exchange for American F-16s, Poland today announced that it is ready to give America the jets and let Washington then transfer them to Kyiv.

The problem: it seems no one told the US, and after hours of confusion, a Pentagon statement effectively shut the door on the plan.

The Polish announcement, published in English on a government website Tuesday afternoon, stated that the “authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy — immediately and free of charge — all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.

“At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes. The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies — owners of MIG-29 jets — to act in the same vein.”

The announcement was followed by a rush of excitement online that a deal had been reached to get Ukraine much-needed aviation assets, a cause that had been picked up by Ukrainian supporters around the world and inside the US Congress. But the fact the statement said Poland is “ready to deploy” the planes, and that no US government announcement immediately came with it, raised red flags.

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The first official response was from a senior defense official who said only “We’ve seen the Polish government’s announcement. We have nothing to offer at this time.” A more definitive take came from Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, who happened to be testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly after the announcement came out.

In response to a question about Poland’s statement, Nuland said, “I saw that announcement by the government of Poland as I was literally driving here today. To my knowledge, it wasn’t pre-consulted with us that they planned to give the planes to us … I look forward to getting back to my desk and seeing how we will respond to this proposal of theirs, to give their planes to us.”

Asked later in the hearing to clarify that the Polish offer was not coordinated, Nuland said, “Not to my knowledge. I was in a meeting where I ought to have heard about that just before I came. So I think that actually was a surprise move by the Poles.”

The confusion continued later in the day, after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said any decisions about delivering offensive weapons to Ukraine must be made by NATO members unanimously. And hours after the announcement was made, the Pentagon released a statement calling the complex deal described by Poland not “tenable.”

“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance. It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it,” the statement said, noting that the proposal “shows just some of the complexities this issue presents.”

At least one key NATO ally may prefer that the potential fighter swap have been kept under better wraps.

Speaking at a Center for a New American Security event today, French Chief of Defence Gen. Thierry Burkhard said that “we have to” provide weapons to Ukraine. But, he said, it must be done in a “reasonable way” — one that is less public.

“The support that is brought by European countries and NATO, it’s something that needs to be done, but not necessarily communicated upon,” Burkhard said through a translator. “So we shouldn’t communicate too much about this.

“The Russians can accept a certain number of things, but they cannot accept that we overplayed our support for Ukraine,” he said later in the event. “The less we can say, the more we can do.”

How Would The Fighter Deal Work?

Even before the Pentagon all but killed Poland’s proposal, there were legal questions about how the US could accept a gift of almost 30 Russian-made fighters from Poland. A precedent for such a deal, where the US accepts a gift of weapons from another country was not immediately apparent, nor is it clear what legal method the US would use to transfer those weapons back to Ukraine.

“This does create a little bit of, like, bureaucratic ‘can we even do this sort of situation,’” Max Bergmann, who served at the State Department from 2011 to 2017, including as senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said before the Pentagon’s statement was released. While noting that he could not think of anything comparable in the past, Bergmann did say that if the US was interested in pursuing the plan, “My guess is we can probably find a way.”

Bergmann, now with the Center for American Progress, said he thinks the confusion about today’s actions come from Polish leaders having created a “political problem for themselves” when early discussions about a jet swap became public.

Likely, Warsaw “looked at the potential escalatory impacts of transferring these planes from Polish airfields adjacent to Ukraine, and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s putting a target on us, and that is escalatory.’ And they don’t know how to back down, how to sort of get out of this,” Bergmann said. “They don’t want to look soft vis-a-vis Russia and to their public, and so they just tried to kick this problem to the United States.”

Then there are questions about logistics — how the jets would get to Ukraine without being shot down by Russian air assets, where they would be based, who would fly and maintain them, how the Ukrainian pilots would get to Germany to take control of the planes and, not to mention, how quickly the US could backfill planes to Poland.

Nuland noted that a key part in any deal where Poland gives up air assets would be making sure they still “benefit from full air security from the NATO alliance,” which is where the backfill of jets by the US would come in.

Based on the statement from Warsaw, Poland is willing to accept older F-16 models, as opposed to new planes. That opens up the next question of what exactly “corresponding operational capabilities” means. Based on the upgrades Poland did in the mid-2010s, that comparable capability would seem to be somewhere between a Block 30 and a Block 40/42 jet — capabilities most readily available in the Air National Guard — with European compatible navigation systems installed.

But considering the surprise from the US side and the Pentagon’s blunt assessment, it’s an open question how or if a fighter swap plan proceeds at all.

“Sometimes you throw ideas out there, they get pursued, they get reported, people get excited and then at the end of the day you say, ‘That’s not gonna make any sense,’” Bergmann said. “I feel like that’s where we’re headed. Everyone got excited. Everyone got a little over their skis. Ultimately, the important thing is to make the right decision about what to do.”