WARSAW, 09 March 2022, (TON): The Pentagon rejected Poland’s offer to give the United States its MiG-29 fighter jets for use by Ukraine, in a rare public display of disharmony by NATO allies seeking to boost Ukrainian fighters while avoiding getting caught up in a wider war with Russia.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Poland’s proposal earlier to deliver the jets to the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany raised the concerning prospect of jets departing from a US and NATO base to fly into airspace contested with Russia in the Ukraine war.

Kirby said in a statement “we will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.”

He said “it is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.”

Any decision to provide the MiGs would be a morale booster for Ukraine as Russian attacks on its cities deepen the humanitarian catastrophe. But it also would raise the risks of a wider war.

One senior US diplomat said Poland’s announcement came as a surprise.