Poland rejects Ukraine’s request for more fighter jets

MADRID 3 Nov. () –

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request to send more fighter jets to defend the country against attacks by the Russian Army.

“We have our own defense needs,” the liberal-conservative politician defended in an interview this Friday with the Polsat news channel. “Poland is a frontline country in this war. We are the only country in the European Union and NATO that has Russia and Ukraine as neighbors. Ukraine understands that we also have to deter (Russian President Vladimir) Putin” , he pointed out.

These words come after the Ukrainian president reproached the Polish authorities this Thursday for their refusal to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine and for not sending more MiG-29 fighters to his country.

“We wanted the MiGs from Poland, but they couldn’t give them to us because they didn’t have enough. That’s why we agreed with NATO that they would be assigned a police mission, like our Baltic friends (…) Did Poland give us planes? No,” he declared during a meeting with local leaders from Transcarpathia, a Ukrainian region bordering Hungary.

When asked about these statements, Sikorski defended that it is a “broader and more spontaneous” statement about the course of the conflict. “It is not that the president deliberately attacked Poland, but that Ukraine is in a difficult situation, it has also made mistakes,” he said.

On the other hand, the minister took the opportunity to highlight his Government’s proposal to grant Ukraine a “defense loan.” “It could have been done from the beginning: Go ahead, buy from Polish factories on credit, and when they rebuild, they will return it,” he explained.

In any case, he has defended that his mission as a member of the Polish Executive is “to keep this war as far as possible from (its) borders.”