NATO guarantee emboldens Slovakia to send Soviet-era weaponry to Ukraine

Former Soviet satellite Slovakia has been a NATO member since 2004, but the reality of belonging to the world’s biggest military alliance really kicked in after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

The small central European country now hosts thousands of NATO troops while allied aircraft patrol its skies, allowing Bratislava to consider becoming the first nation to send fighter jets to neighbouring Ukraine — getting rid of its unwieldy Soviet-era planes at the same time.

Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad is grateful.

“I would say that the Slovak Republic is a more secure country in a less secure world,” Nad told the AP in an interview in Bratislava.

“We remember well what it was like to have occupiers on our territory,” he added, referring to the 1968 Soviet-led military invasion of former Czechoslovakia — from which Slovakia split peacefully in 1993, four years after the communist regime fell.

The country of 5.4 million hosts a battlegroup with troops from the United States, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, as NATO moved to reassure members on its eastern flank worried about a potential Russian threat.

“The message behind deploying all of those units is simple,” Czech Colonel Karel Navratil, the battlegroup commander, told the Associated Press. “Our task is deterrence ... to deter a potential aggressor from spreading its aggression to NATO member states.”

Slovakia is also working to upgrade its own armed forces to NATO standards. And that has proved a boon to embattled Ukraine, where much of Slovakia’s old Soviet-era heavy weaponry has ended up.

That has included S-300 air defence missiles, helicopters, thousands of rockets for Grad multiple launchers, and dozens of armoured vehicles. In exchange, Slovakia has U.S. patriot air defence batteries temporarily deployed with American, German and Dutch troops, and received German Leopard tanks and Mantis air defence systems.

All in all, Slovakia has given Ukraine arms worth almost 168 million euros ($179 million), and has also recouped over 82 million euros ($87 million) through a dedicated EU fund.

Amid renewed appeals to Western countries for fighter jets, Slovakia is considering giving Ukraine 10 of its 11 Soviet-made MiG-29 planes — with the 11th reserved for a Slovakian museum, according to Defense Minister Nad.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy directly requested the planes from Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger at a European Union summit in Brussels this month.

If Slovakia agrees, it will be the first NATO member to do so.