The United States did not specify what type of aircraft the Ukrainians had received, nor which country had supplied the aircraft. At the same time, beleaguered Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol fear they are living “their last days” and are calling on the international community for help.
Ukraine has received fighter jets and spare parts to bolster its air force, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday, refusing to specify their number or the countries that supplied the plane.
“Today they have more jets at their disposal than they did two weeks ago. Without going into details about what other countries are supplying, I would say they have been given additional jets and spare parts to expand their fleet,” the spokesman said. a press release. briefing.
He did not specify the type of aircraft delivered to the Ukrainian military, which had been asking for combat aircraft for weeks, but suggested that they were Russian-made aircraft.
Are there MiG-29s known to Ukrainians?
The Pentagon spokesman clarified that the United States, which does not want to act as a belligerent country in this conflict, has facilitated the sending of spare parts to Ukrainian territory, but has not sent aircraft there: “Other countries with experience with this type of aircraft have been able to help put more aircraft into service
Kiev demanded from its western partners Mig-29 that its soldiers already know how to fly, and that a handful of Eastern European countries have. A possible transfer of such Russian aircraft from Poland had been discussed in early March, before the United States opposed it, fearing that Russia would see too much direct NATO involvement in the conflict.
The desperate appeal of Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol
The day before, Ukrainian fighters made a desperate appeal to the international community for rescue: “We may be living our last days, even our last hours,” said a commander of Ukrainian soldiers besieged in Mariupol, a strategic port in southeastern Ukraine. which Moscow has vowed to take control of.
“The enemy is ten times more numerous than us,” Serguiy Volyna of the 36th Marine Brigade said on Facebook. “We are calling and begging all world leaders to help us. We are asking them to use the extraction procedure and take us to the territory of a third country.”
At the same time, agreement was reached on the creation of a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the besieged port of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, the first such agreement since Saturday, a Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.
“We managed to find a preliminary agreement (with the Russians) on a humanitarian corridor for women, children and the elderly,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram. The corridor is located in the direction of the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhya (south).
