Sen. Rob Portman questioned the Biden administration’s refusal to support Poland’s proposal to transfer jets into American custody before sending them on to Ukraine.
Poland announced last week that it would be sending its entire fleet of Russian-made MiG-29s to a U.S. military base in Germany before they’d be transferred to Ukraine in response to pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Pentagon came out against the deal days later, warning that Russia may view the move as escalatory.
The Ohio Republican, speaking during a Sunday morning appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, said he was unsure why the administration believes Russia would view this arms trade as provocative considering the other moves the United States and NATO have made to help Ukrainian forces.
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“We have given them helicopters. As recently as January, we provided them U.S. military helicopters. And those are directly from the United States. In this case, this would be Poland providing these airplanes, which are Soviet-style planes, old planes, MiG-29s,” he said. “They want the ability to have better control over the — over the skies in order to give them a fighting chance.”
“I don’t understand why this is any worse than, from a Russian point of view, than other things … that we’ve already done or that we’re talking about,” the senator continued.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has called the proposed deal “high risk” and “tenable” in separate statements since the Polish announced their plan. The Department of Defense was unaware of the proposal before it went public, according to a senior defense official.
The intelligence community is concerned that this deal could be “mistaken as escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” he added. “The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.”
The White House also referenced the fear of the deal being viewed as an escalation by Russia during Wednesday’s briefing.
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“The logistical questions here, just to put a fine point on it, are things like how do you get planes into Ukraine in a way that is not escalatory?” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “And what are the logistics and operational details of that? Those are the conversations that are happening between counterparts at the military level.”
President Joe Biden and Congress have approved more than $1 billion in aid, though he and other administration officials have said on multiple occasions that U.S. troops would not fight Russian forces unless NATO’s Article 5 is invoked.
The Pentagon has taken numerous steps to avoid doing things that could be interpreted as escalatory, including the postponement of a missile test and the creation of a de-confliction line between the U.S. and Russian military officials. The U.S. uses the line “once or twice a day” to “check in,” Kirby said last week.
