Kyiv says US has 'no objections' to Poland supplying war planes

Ukraine said Saturday that the United States does not object to the transfer of war planes to Kyiv to help it fend off the Russian invasion, after the Pentagon previously rejected a "high risk" offer from Poland.

Officials in Washington "have no objections to the transfer of aircrafts. As far as we can conclude, the ball is now on the Polish side. We will look further into this matter in our conversations with Polish colleagues," Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in written comments.

His comments come shortly after a meeting in Poland with Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov and US President Joe Biden, who was visiting the NATO member to shore up US support for the country bordering Ukraine.

The Pentagon earlier this month conclusively rejected as too "high risk" a plan to transfer fighter jets from Poland to Kyiv to battle Russian forces, pouring cold water for now on Ukraine's bid for more firepower in the skies.

"Ukraine is in a critical need for more combat aircraft," Kuleba said in the comments, saying Kyiv needed them to "strike a balance in the sky" and prevent Russia from "killing more civilians".

Warsaw had expressed support for a plan in which Poland would have sent its Soviet-era MiG-29s to Kyiv via a US air base in Ramstein, Germany.