erman Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said the government would respond after consultations between his ministry, the chancellery and other stakeholders.
Germany inherited 24 MiG-29 jets from the East German GDR during reunification in 1990. At the time, the aircraft were seen as among the most advanced fighter jets in the world.
In 2004, Berlin passed on 22 of the aircraft to Poland. Of the remaining two jets, one was destroyed in a crash and one is on show at a museum.
Poland needs Berlin’s consent to send its remaining jets to a third country.
“The promise is that a reply to our Polish partners will be forthcoming within the day,” Pistorius told reporters on a visit to Mali.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a visit to Warsaw last week that Poland would help form a coalition of Western powers to supply warplanes to Kyiv.
Ukraine, which hopes to launch a counteroffensive in the coming weeks or months, wants fighter jets to defend against air strikes.
Western countries have so far been reluctant to send advanced fighter jets such as F-16’s to Kyiv, but some countries have stepped in to send old MiG-29 jets that Ukraine already uses.
Meanwhile, Russian artillery and aerial attacks killed two civilians and wounded two more in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson yesterday, the local governor said.
“The army of the Russian Federation hit Zmiivka in Kherson region with guided aerial bombs, they hit a school and ... one person was killed and another was wounded,” Oleksandr Prokudin, the governor, said.
The area is now under almost constant bombardment from Russian forces that are entrenched on the opposite side of the Dnipro River
Another man was killed in the shelling of a park inside the city of Kherson early in the morning and another person was wounded in a village elsewhere in the region, he said.
Ukrainian troops recaptured Kherson last November after nearly eight months of occupation by Russian forces who seized it soon after the start of the invasion.
The area is now under almost constant bombardment from Russian forces that are entrenched on the opposite side of the Dnipro River.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said yesterday his country won’t budge from its demand that Russia withdraw its forces from Crimea, as well as from other parts of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed more recently, for the war to end.
Calling the conflict in Ukraine “a bleeding wound in the middle of Europe,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said all his country’s territory must be treated equally in dealing with the Kremlin after its full-scale invasion more than 13 months ago.
“We are united by UN charter principles and the shared conviction that Crimea is Ukraine and it will return under Ukraine’s control,” Kuleba said, speaking by video link to a gathering in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
Though there is no sign of possible peace negotiations, the two countries have sporadically exchanged prisoners of war and have engaged in a wartime deal for the export of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertilisers.
The grain deal has helped ease concerns about the global food supply, especially to countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia where many are already struggling with hunger. The agreement, which the UN and Turkey brokered last July, is delicate, however, and Moscow has repeatedly threatened to end it.
In the latest dispute, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that no discussion about extending the Black Sea grain deal beyond May 18 would take place until progress was made towards resolving what it called “five systemic problems” that have resulted from sanctions on Russia over the war.