Russian technicians could have intentionally damaged Soviet-made MiG-29 fighters that Slovakia had decided to supply to Ukraine.

The Slovak government recently decided to supply Ukraine with Soviet MiG-29 fighter jets which were in service in the country but which the Slovak army has not used since August 2022.

"They were able to fly, but that doesn’t mean they were also capable of combat. The Ukrainians came to Slovakia a week before their departure, brought spare parts and inspected the planes," Euractiv cites Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď who explained that the opposition, led by the Smer-SD party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico, strongly criticised the government for giving up the aircraft.

Naď said that in the past, the aircraft had been found to have malfunctions, which the minister suggested could have been intentionally caused by Russian technicians. Until last year, there were Russians present at the Sliač air base in Slovakia, and it was then, according to the country's Defence Ministry, that they could have caused damage to the aircraft.

"Even the police were investigating it, based on our suspicions. There were parts in the engines of the aircraft that Slovak technicians accessed, and then there were parts that only Russian technicians accessed. The defects appeared only in those parts accessed by Russians," Naď said.

While the investigation did not prove intention, the Defence Ministry "felt a loss of confidence in the Russian technicians at Sliač because mistakes kept appearing in places only they could get to," the minister added.

Lieutenant General Ľubomír Svoboda, a former highest-ranking pilot, also suggested that Russians intentionally damaged the jets.

"We took over an engine from them that was supposed to last 350 hours. And in the end, it only flew 70 hours. What can we make of that? Maybe there was poor workmanship, let’s call it that. I don’t know," he said in an interview with Denník N.

The Russian Embassy in Slovakia said Slovakia’s supply of fighter jets to Ukraine had led to "an unpredictable and dangerous escalation of the conflict, for which the initiators of the decisions taken will be held responsible".

On 17 March, at an extraordinary online meeting, the Slovak government decided to hand over 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine. The first four of them have already been sent to Ukraine.

The Slovak opposition party Smer-SD filed a criminal complaint against government ministers for approving the transfer of decommissioned MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine.