CNN ||
The US on Tuesday rejected a proposal from Poland to send Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine by way of a US-NATO airbase in Germany.
As it turns out, the government is still working out how to fulfill Ukraine’s urgent request for more fighter planes in its war with Russia, US officials have told CNN, though a straightforward solution does not appear imminent.
The US and NATO want to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian troops invading the country, but also avoid being drawn into an outright conflict with Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been asking the West for MiG-29 fighter jets, which were used during the Cold War and that Ukrainian pilots were trained to use, to maintain control of the skies in his country as it remains under attack by Russia.
Zelensky’s other request for help establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been rejected by the US and the alliance, who view it as a move that would pit them directly against Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also warned that he would consider countries imposing a no-fly zone “as participants in a military conflict.”
With a no-fly zone off the table, the US has weighed the option of providing support to the Ukrainian military by helping facilitate the delivery of Polish fighter jets to Ukraine. But it has proven to be a thorny political issue and logistically complicated objective.
Over the weekend, the US said it was in discussions with Poland about a potential deal in which Poland would supply Ukraine with MiG-29 fighter jets that Ukraine has requested, and the US would then provide Poland with American F-16s.
Poland, however, on Tuesday took the US by surprise and offered to deploy all its MiG-29 fighter jets to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia — but by first sending the jets to US Ramstein Air Base in Germany, also a NATO nation.
The US Defense Department rejected the proposal as not “tenable” and deemed it too risky.
“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,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement later Tuesday.
US officials described the issue to CNN as two-fold: a logistics problem of getting the jets to Ukraine, and a political problem of avoiding escalation with Russia. US officials described the Polish plan as failing to adequately address both.
NATO members have expressed concerns that providing fighter jets to Ukraine — even if done bilaterally — could be perceived by Russia as the alliance becoming directly involved in the war, NATO diplomats told CNN.
Poland, a NATO member and neighbor of Ukraine, has also been worried about the risks of sharing the fighter jets with Ukraine, as they don’t want to become a party to the conflict and escalate the situation along their border, Polish officials told CNN.
If a Russian attack extends into one of the bordering NATO countries, it could trigger Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which is the principle that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all members.
If Article 5 is invoked, the US and other NATO members would then be obligated to provide resources to protect a fellow NATO member and could find themselves directly involved in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
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