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Poland had asked Germany for permission to export five old MiG-29 fighters to bolster Ukraine’s air power against Russian invasion, the German Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
The German government has given Poland the green light to send Soviet-made combat aircraft to Ukraine that originally belonged to the arsenals of the extinct German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Defense Ministry reported.
“I am happy to announce that we have authorized our Polish partners to send to Ukraine five MiG-29s from the former GDR Army stocks,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said.
Germany inherited 24 MiG-29s from the GDR during the 1990 reunification. At the time they were considered one of the most advanced fighters in the world, but in 2004 Berlin handed over 22 of the aircraft to Poland. Of the remaining two, one crashed and the other is on display in a museum.
As part of the deal, Poland needed Berlin’s consent to send the remaining planes to a third country.
During a visit to Warsaw last week, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky asked Poland for help in forming a coalition of Western powers to supply warplanes to kyiv.
Ukraine — which plans to launch a counteroffensive in the coming weeks or months — wants to ensure it has fighter jets to defend against Russian airstrikes. But, so far, Western countries are reluctant to send advanced fighters such as F-16s to kyiv, although some have opted to send older MiG-29 jets.
Another country, Slovakia, also promised to send MiG-29s to Ukraine.. The nation gave him four of the jets by the end of March, and expect to deliver a total of 13 aircraft. These weapons are immediately engaged in combat because the Ukrainian air forces are already using and familiar with them.
“Our actions will be powerful. We are preparing the boys,” Zelensky said in his late-night speech on Thursday. “And we are eagerly awaiting the delivery of weapons promised by our partners. We are getting as close to victory as possible,” he added.
Germany has not supplied planes to Ukraine, and the government of Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz has no public intention to do so. A position that has earned him strong criticism despite the fact that the European country has become the largest supplier of weapons in continental Europe to Ukraine. In January he announced that he would supply combat vehicles to Ukraine, but there is still resistance to increasing aid.
“It is correct that the (German) government did not delay the decision, but made it the same day the Polish request arrived,” said Liberal Party Defense expert Marcus Faber in statements quoted by ‘Der Spiegel’.
Close to Navalny fear that he is the victim of “slow poisoning”
Meanwhile, in Russia, Alexei Navalny, an opposition politician imprisoned since 2021, is suffering severe stomach pains in jail that could be due to some kind of slow-acting poison, his spokesman Kira Yarmysh said on Thursday.
Yarmysh reported that the opponent was hospitalized from Friday to Saturday at the maximum security IK-6 Melejovo penitentiary, some 250 km east of Moscow, where he is being held.
In addition, he explained that Navalny suffered from severe stomach pains that prevented him from eating and that since Monday he has been prohibited from buying alternative food.
“He doesn’t eat anything because he is prohibited from receiving food parcels or buying food from the prison shop, and the food provided by the prison actually makes his stomach ache worse,” Yarmysh said.
“His state of health is not good. We cannot rule out the idea that he is being poisoned, not in a huge dose as before, but in small ones so that he does not die immediately, but suffers and ruins his health,” he added.
In 2020, Navalny survived a poisoning attempt in Siberia. The opponent accused Moscow, but the Kremlin denied it. A year later, the opposition leader returned voluntarily, was imprisoned and sentenced to nine years in prison for crimes such as propaganda of terrorism and extremism, financing of extremist activities and rehabilitation of Nazism.
Recently, Russia’s FSB security service implicated Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, FBK, in the explosion in St. Petersburg, where famous pro-Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed.
Russia identifies Ukrainian suspect in murder of Russian blogger
The FSB reported on Thursday that a Ukrainian citizen – whom it identified as Yuriy Denyso – had collected information on the blogger and supplied Darya Trepova with explosives, via a courier service.
The agency believes that Denysov acted on orders from the Ukrainian security services and left Russia the day after the attack. Tatarsky was the pseudonym of Maxim Fomin, who had amassed more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram channel and was part of separatists in eastern Ukraine, where he fought on the front lines for years before turning to blogging.
Since the invasion in Ukraine, military bloggers have become increasingly visible in Russia, supporting the war, but also exposing flaws in military strategy.
In addition, the FSB claimed that Trepova was a supporter of Navalny. The security service accused the opposition’s main allies, Ivan Zhdanov and Leonid Volkov, of calling for subversive activities in Russia.
With AP and EFE
