Poland's Ministry of National Defence has confirmed that the plan to sell used MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, which are being withdrawn from service regardless, remains in force and is currently under review by the Ukrainian side.
Poland's deputy defense minister said in an interview on the On the Record program that the discussions have now entered an exclusively technical phase. From the Polish government's perspective, a positive decision has already been made, and Warsaw is awaiting an official response from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
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It is important to emphasize that Polish officials are explicitly referring to a sale, not the transfer of used fighters as military aid. In return, Poland is seeking Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle technologies.
This intention was first announced in December 2025. At that time, however, Poland's General Staff mentioned not only drone-related technologies but also missile technologies.
Currently, the number of aircraft under discussion is described as "up to ten," meaning a maximum of nine used MiG-29s. On paper, the Polish Air Force operates 14 MiG-29s assigned to the 23rd Air Base in Mińsk Mazowiecki, including 11 single-seat and three twin-seat aircraft.
The reason Warsaw refers only to "up to ten" aircraft likely lies in the same factors that prompted the decision to sell them in the first place. These were officially stated back in December: the aircraft have reached their designated service life limits, and there are no prospects for further modernization within the Polish Armed Forces.
In practice, this means that out of the 14 aircraft formally listed as operational, only this number can realistically be considered suitable for sale based on their technical condition. This is hardly surprising. Of the 13 Slovak MiG-29AS fighters transferred to Ukraine in 2023, only four were able to fly to Ukraine under their own power, while the remaining nine had to be transported by trucks in a disassembled state.
The Slovak fighters underwent a similar scope of limited modernization at roughly the same time as the Polish MiG-29s, which were upgraded between 2011 and 2014 at Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze No. 2. Despite frequent claims that these aircraft meet NATO standards, this primarily refers to communications and navigation systems, rather than the integration of new weapon systems.
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