Poland has delivered the first promised MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, a Polish presidency official said today, following a similar announcement by Slovakia in late March.

“Some MiGs have already been sent, they serve Ukraine to defend the security of all of us,” Marcin Przydacz, an adviser to the Polish presidency, told private radio station RMF FM.

Polish President Andrzej Duda had announced in mid-March that four aircraft were to be delivered, clarifying that Poland has around 15 MiGs, which it had inherited in the 1990s from the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic.

Slovakia has since announced that it delivered the first four planes of this type to Ukraine on March 23. In total, Bratislava had promised Kiev 13 MiG-29s.

Ukraine recently declined to confirm to AFP the number of MiG-29s it has, but according to Flight Global’s World Air Forces 2023 report released late last year, the country has 43 aircraft.

Kiev has repeatedly asked its Western allies to send it modern fighter bombers in the hope of getting American F-16s.