US Vice President Kamala Harris has left for Poland and Romania, where she will meet with Polish leaders to discuss fighter jet transfers to Ukraine.
The subject has revealed divisions within the Nato alliance. On Tuesday, US officials rejected Poland’s offer to provide the US with MiG-29 fighter jets as an intermediary step toward transferring them to Ukraine as “untenable.”
A senior US administration official said in advance of the vice president’s trip that the topic of Polish jets would “absolutely” come up during her meetings with Polish leaders – but he was unsure where the discussions would go.
“We’ve been talking with the Poles for a while about how to best provide a variety of security assistance to Ukraine,” the official said. “A number of people have come up with a variety of ideas, and we believe that all of them are worth discussing.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressing Nato for Soviet-era jets, which its fighter pilots are familiar with, to bolster its defenses against Russia’s two-week-old invasion. He mentioned jets in a speech to US members of Congress last week, and he mentioned them again in a speech to the British Parliament on Tuesday.
While Nato leaders, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have expressed interest in the idea, arranging the details of such a transfer without risking a conflict has proven difficult.
“Poland’s proposal demonstrates some of the complexities that the issue presents,” Mr Blinken said during a press conference with British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss on Wednesday. “We have to make sure we’re doing it correctly.”
Negotiations among Nato allies were taking place behind closed doors, but on Tuesday Poland made a public offer to transfer its MiG-29 jets to Germany’s Ramstein US air base in exchange for US-made aircraft of comparable condition and sophistication.
The US had no advance knowledge of Poland’s public offer, according to US secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who was testifying before a US Congress committee at the time of the announcement.
The Pentagon’s press secretary, John Kirby, described Poland’s offer as posing “difficult logistical challenges” in a statement released Tuesday evening.
“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ flying into contested airspace with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire Nato alliance,” he said.
On Wednesday, a German government spokesperson was more emphatic, saying that transferring Polish fighters to Ukraine “was not currently on the table.”
American officials have repeatedly stated that the decision on fighters was ultimately made by the Polish government, implying that the US may want to stay out of direct involvement, at least publicly.
Polish leaders, on the other hand, have stated that their country will only act in collaboration with allies.
“It cannot be that Poland, as the only Nato country, bears the risk while other countries do nothing, do not compensate us, and do not share it with us,” Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said on Polish Radio on Wednesday.
Other forms of US military assistance to Ukraine are still in place. On Tuesday evening, US congressional leaders agreed to provide an additional $7 billion (£5.3 billion) in military hardware to Ukraine and US allies in the region, implying that more weapons are on the way.
“We have provided extraordinary support to Ukraine,” said Mr Blinken on Wednesday. “Ukrainian assistance that has been extremely effective.”
BBC
