DSlovakia wants to deliver MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. Slovak Foreign Minister Rastislav Kacer told the Ukrainian news agency Interfax-Ukraina in an interview published on Monday. During his meeting with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kiev on Thursday last week, there were good discussions about how the delivery should take place.
In the coming weeks, a Ukrainian delegation will travel to Slovakia to work with Slovaks and Americans to implement the delivery. “I am optimistic that the planes will appear in Ukraine soon,” Kacer said. According to Kacer, the Slovak government last week decided to supply Ukraine with missiles to arm MiG-29s.
Slovakia would be the first NATO member to give Ukraine fighter jets. In mid-April, the Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced his willingness to hand over the twelve MiG-29s of the Slovakian Air Force to the Ukraine. At the beginning of July he repeated this willingness, but without giving any details. In mid-August, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad countered rumors that the MiG-29s were already in Ukraine. Slovakia is in talks with the allies about what to do with the planes if they are decommissioned as planned, he said at the time; a decision has not yet been made.
Slovakia is waiting for American F-16s
Slovakia had long planned to replace more than thirty-year-old Soviet-designed fighter jets with American F-16s this summer. However, the delivery of the American aircraft is expected to be delayed by two years. Until their expected arrival in 2024, Poland and the Czech Republic will take over the defense of Slovakian airspace; Corresponding agreements were reached in April with Warsaw and in July with Prague.
In mid-March, a delivery of MiG-29s from the stocks of the Polish Air Force to Ukraine was still met with resistance in NATO. At the time, most members of the alliance, led by the United States, considered the risk that Russia could see the supply of fighter jets as an escalation of the conflict by the West as too high.
Since then, however, the NATO countries have supplied Ukraine with various weapon systems that were still considered taboo in March. These include Soviet T-72 main battle tanks from the Polish and Slovak Armed Forces, state-of-the-art howitzers, HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, which played a crucial role in the Ukrainian operation to liberate Kherson, and air defense systems such as the Soviet S-300, received by Ukraine from Slovakia and the new German system IRIS-T.
Repair center opened in Slovakia
Allegedly, Ukraine has also received spare parts for its own MiG-29 aircraft from western stocks. There were also reports in the autumn that, with Western help, Ukraine’s MiG-29s had been modified to carry advanced AGM-88 Harm anti-radar air-to-surface missiles.
Slovakia’s importance in Ukraine’s defense was also highlighted on Monday by the opening of a repair center by German defense contractor Kraus-Maffei Wegmann in the town of Michalovce, near the border with Ukraine. This will eliminate long transport routes in the future when the equipment delivered to Ukraine needs to be serviced or repaired.