Slovakia and Poland have reached an agreement to hand over Slovakian MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, the defence ministers of the two countries announced in Bratislava on Friday.
Poland has agreed to secure Slovakian airspace with its US F-16s if the MiGs are no longer available, Slovakian Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad said.
His Polish counterpart Mariusz Błaszczak described it as "perfectly natural" for the Polish Air Force to extend its area of operations to its southern neighbour. Slovakia is much smaller than Poland, both EU and NATO countries border directly on Ukraine and support it intensively with humanitarian and military aid.
Nad and other representatives of the Slovakian government had initially denied that Slovakia could comply with the Ukrainian request to hand over the Soviet-designed MiG fighter planes. They wanted to get rid of these aircraft in the long term because only technicians from hostile Russia could maintain them. For the time being, however, they are indispensable until Slovakia receives the F-16s it ordered from the US several years ago.
Similarly, Nad had initially declared the S-300 air defence system, which was also developed in the Soviet Union, to be indispensable. Then, at the beginning of April, he surprisingly announced that the missile system had been given to Ukraine as a gift and had already been secretly delivered there.
The Slovakian opposition therefore accused the government of lying to its own population and leaving it without sufficient military protection.
