Ten Polish MiG-29 fighter jets already in service in Ukraine

8 May, 2023 MiG-29 of the Polish Air Force. Photo credits: Polish media Poland has already handed over ten MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine.

The fighter aircraft came from the Polish Armed Forces. Mariusz Blaszczak, Polish Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, stated this in an interview after a meeting with his Canadian counterpart Anita Anand in Ottawa. "We delivered ten MiG-29s to Ukraine," Blaszczak said during the interview.

At the end of April 2023, Militarnyi reported that Polish airspotters had photographed in the Polish sky MiG-29s without any identification marks, which were probably flying to Ukraine.

A pair of MiG-29s in the sky over Tricity in Poland, April 26, 2023

Despite their age and obsolescence, Polish fighters are still capable of performing air defense tasks as hunters for numerous Russian subsonic cruise missiles, such as the Kh-101 and Kalibr. On April 13, the German government approved Poland's request to export MiG-29 fighters, that the country received back in the nineties of the last century. The aircraft were used as part of the East German Armed Forces to patrol the country's airspace and participate in military exercises.

However, after the unification of Germany in 1990, the fighters were sold to other countries. In 2002, Germany sold 23 MiG-29 fighters to Poland. Polish President Andrzej Duda's security adviser, Jacek Severa, said in late March that the Polish Air Force now has about a dozen of those.

In mid-April, Slovakia completed the transfer of its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. All 13 fighter aircraft, which the country's government has previously decided to hand over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion, are already on Ukrainian territory. The first batch of four fighter jets was handed over to the Ukrainian Air Force in March of this year.

They took off from the air base under the control of Ukrainian pilots.

MiG-29 of the Slovak Air Force.

Photo credits: Lukasz