Poland providing Ukraine with MiG-29 fighter jets does not in any way contribute to the “destruction of Ukraine’s Armed Forces”. On the contrary, Poland and Slovakia’s decision to transfer several dozen fighter jets to the Ukrainian military will only strengthen Ukraine’s combat readiness for the expected counteroffensive. Poland is one of Ukraine’s main partners in providing military assistance and training Ukrainian soldiers. Warsaw was one of the first countries to announce it would send German Leopard 2 tanks, as well as MiG-29 jets to Ukraine.
Social media and Russian media websites are disseminating claims about an “American intelligence officer” who supposedly revealed “Poland’s plan to destroy Ukrainian soldiers.” “The supply of fighter jets by NATO countries, in particular Poland, to Ukraine will not affect the outcome of the conflict but will lead to inevitable losses in the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” said Scott Ritter, a retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer, in an interview with Stephen Gardner on YouTube,” writes the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. Ritter also said that “just four planes won’t do anything.”
Stephen Gardner is a financial coach who is also a YouTube political pundit, posting regular interviews on Washington politics.
“As soon as they take off, Ukrainian fighter jets are very quickly shot down. I don’t think sending these machines will have any effect. Poles have just created new targets for the Russian army. Unfortunately for Ukrainian pilots, their average lifespan will be extremely short,” Scott Ritter declares.
Poland does not have any plans to destroy Ukraine’s armed forces. On the contrary, Poland is one of Ukraine’s key partners in providing military assistance and training Ukrainian soldiers. Warsaw was one of the first to announce its readiness to send German Leopard 2 tanks as well as MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.
In addition, Poland has announced plans to provide military training every month to two Ukrainian military battalions. Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister, Wojciech Skurkiewicz, noted that Poland will also conduct special group training for sappers, as well as medical courses and basic training for Ukrainian military personnel. Skurkiewicz emphasized that the training of Ukrainian units is part of an EU mission, of which Poland, as one its largest contributors, is one of its main organizers and the mission’s operational manager.
Deputy Defense Minister Skurkewicz also informed that Poland has already made 30 deliveries of weapons, ammunition and military supplies to Ukraine. In addition, through a hub created in southeastern Poland, “about 50 countries from around the world send military aid to Ukraine every day on a permanent basis.” As of the beginning of February, 2023, Poland has provided over $2 billion in military assistance to Ukraine.
In an interview with the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, stated that the future of Poland depends on its assistance to Ukraine. “We are helping Ukraine because our neighbor in the East determines what our future will look like; we do more than others because we have more to gain and lose,” the Polish leader emphasized. Therefore, the claim that Poland’s actions “contribute to the destruction of Ukraine’s Armed Forces ” is absurd and has no evidentiary basis.
The narrative that Western arms supplies will not change the course of Russia’s war against Ukraine, but will only lead to even greater losses among the Ukrainian army, is another favorite Russian propaganda topic. Such claims are also patently absurd. Thanks to the supply of modern weapons from partners, in the fall of 2022 the Ukrainian army was able to conduct successful counter-operations in the Kharkiv region and liberate the right bank of the Kherson region, as well as significantly strengthen its air defense capabilities.
On March 16, Poland officially announced the transfer of the first four MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, but Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasized that this was only the first batch, more would come after appropriate aircraft servicing and preparation. He did not specify the exact number, but it is estimated that Poland has about a dozen of these type jets. Following Poland, the Slovak government officially approved the shipment of 13 MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. The spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Yuriy Ignat, called this good news because “this step has started the transfer of combat aircraft” to Ukraine, the BBC reported. The Ukrainian Air Force needs aircraft. MiG-29s form the basis of the country’s fighter aircraft, and Ukrainian pilots are familiar with these planes. “According to experts, the MiG-29 significantly lags behind the F-16 in many parameters. However, replacing a combat aircraft in modern warfare is now nothing – drones cannot yet conduct aerial combat, and they have much less useful payload for striking ground targets,” the BBC stresses.
At the same time, in Russia, this decision was predictably criticized. In particular, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that it would “cause harm to Ukrainians themselves” and would not affect the outcome of the hostilities. It is easy to see that the “American intelligence officer,” who is often quoted in Russian media, regularly repeats the same message.
Scott Ritter is indeed a former US intelligence officer who served in the 1980s. From 1991 to 1998, Ritter worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. However, in 2011 Ritter was convicted in an underage Internet sex sting. He was caught twice trying to arrange meetings with underage girls he had met online. The first time, after a six-month probationary period, the charges were dropped, but the second attempt resulted in two and a half years in prison. After his release in 2014, demand for his services as a military expert in the US had dwindled. Ritter began to appear on, propagandist media, who frequently quoted his “analysis.” After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ritter accused Ukraine of murders in Bucha, called Biden a war criminal, and claimed that Poland intends to attack and occupy Ukraine’s western regions.
StopFake has repeatedly debunked the fakes of Scott Ritter and similar “experts” in articles such as “Fake: The Russian Military Took Mariupol in Less Than an Hour – Ukrainian Army Completely Incompetent,” “Fake: The US Revealed Fate of 30,000 Mercenaries Fighting for Zelenskyy,” and “It’s all over, Ukraine has been defeated. RT columnist, who served time for pedophilia, called the problem of ammunition shortage unsolvable.”
