Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Heger’s government will send Slovakia’s grounded MiG fighters to Ukraine. Fire has damaged buildings in the UNESCO-listed town of Banská Štiavnica. The country risks losing hundreds of millions of euros from its Recovery Plan.
Slovakia’s unused jets will defend Ukraine
When President Zuzana Čaputová travels to Kyiv with the new Czech president, Petr Pavel, later this spring – as agreed during the latter’s first visit to Slovakia on Monday – she will not go empty-handed.
At the end of last week the Slovak government finally found a solution to bypass its own limited powers and approved the transfer of Slovakia’s 13 grounded MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. The package also includes 14 obsolete 2K12 Kub air-defence systems. The government estimates it will take several weeks for the transfer to actually take place.
The government stands on the right side of history, said acting Prime Minister Eduard Heger as he announced that the MiGs were going to go east soon. He is right about that, but it is also true that Slovakia will greatly benefit from the transfer of its defunct jets to the defenders of Ukraine in two significant ways.
