Morawiecki: Poland ready to support Ukraine with MiG jets if broader coalition formed

"Today we can talk about transferring our MiG (jets) as part of a wider coalition and we are ready for that...Poland can only be a part of a much larger coalition here, a coalition with the United States as a leader," said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the Munich Security Conference.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen suggested in her speech the EU join forces with the bloc's defence industry to speed up and scale up the production of ammunition badly needed on the battlefield in Ukraine and to replenish stocks at home. She proposed the bloc do what it did during the pandemic to prepare for the large-scale production of a COVID vaccine.

"We could think of, for example, advanced purchase agreements that give the defence industry the possibility to invest in production lines now to be faster and to increase the amount they can deliver," she said.

Von der Leyen underlined that the bloc could not wait for months and years to be able to replenish its own military stocks or send munitions such as 155-millimetre artillery shells to Ukraine.

EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the idea of joint procurement of 155mm shells – badly needed by Kyiv – at a meeting in Brussels on Monday.

"At the moment we are talking about standardised ... ammunition that we would finance either on European level or member states level, that is the scheme behind it," von der Leyen said in the interview with Reuters and other media at the Munich Security Conference.

"I don't think that Ukraine will be in the position right now to finance that. Therefore we should finance this."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week that Ukraine was using up artillery shells faster than its allies could currently produce them.