Biden’s Baffling MiG-29 Reversal

On the menu today: This week, in the span of 24 hours, the Biden administration’s position flipped from supporting a transfer of Polish MiG-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainians to opposing and blocking the move. The only explanation from the Pentagon is that there isn’t a “substantive rationale for it,” which will surprise the Polish and the Ukrainians. There are a few potential explanations for the administration’s sudden reversal — but none of them are good.

Very little makes sense about the U.S. government’s seemingly last-minute decision to oppose the transfer of Polish MiG-29s to Ukraine.

On Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke via Zoom to 280 members of Congress and begged them to help him, either by creating and enforcing a no-fly zone above Ukrainian airspace, or by transferring jets to what’s left of the Ukrainian air force. Because the Ukrainian pilots are trained on Russian-designed MiGs, it would not be a good idea to send or lend them American jets such as F-15s or F-22s — there simply isn’t time to train them on a new kind of warplane. But NATO members Poland, Slovakia, and Bulgaria fly MiG-29s and could sell or lend theirs to Ukraine.