NEW YORK, 22 February. /TASS/. The West should hand over the fighter jets to Ukrainian troops if the Kyiv authorities need them. With such statement the president of Poland Andrzej Duda has acted on air on air on CNN on Tuesday .
“If there is such a need, then, of course,” he answered the corresponding question of the journalist.
Duda pointed out that Poland has MiG-29 fighters, for which Ukrainian troops do not need to undergo additional training, but the supply of Western aircraft to the Kyiv authorities is in question. “The question is when Ukrainian pilots will be able to learn how to fly modern NATO aircraft, such as F-16, French Mirage, Eurofighter or other types of modern equipment <…> as pilot training is much more complex and lengthy,” he said. Polish President.
Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, said that Poland could supply Ukraine with MiG-29 fighters in a coalition with other NATO countries, but was not ready to send F-16s, since the republic has few of them.
On January 31, US President Joe Biden said that Washington would not transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Later, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that Kyiv was invited to begin training in the UK for marines and fighter pilots in service with NATO. However, Sunak’s spokesman later clarified that the government had not made a decision to transfer the fighters to Ukraine and the issue would be studied from different angles. In turn, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Republican Defense Minister Boris Pistorius have repeatedly stated that Germany is not going to supply fighter jets to Ukraine.
As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov emphasized, Moscow perceives the supply of weapons by the West to the Ukrainian armed forces as a growing involvement of Western countries in the conflict in Ukraine
source: tass