Media: Azerbaijan Has Supplied Ukraine With MiG-29 Combat Fighters
- 5.09.2025, 20:59
The airplanes have distinctive camouflage.
Ukraine has replenished its fleet of MiG-29 fighter jets from an unexpected source - Azerbaijan, writes The War Zone.
Citing photos by military bloggers, the publication notes that the planes the AFU has obtained have a characteristic Azerbaijani camouflage - blue, gray and purple-gray. The plane in the photo looks as if it is performing a combat task: it is armed with medium-range air-to-air missiles R-27 and short-range missiles R-73. Officially, Azerbaijan did not supply weapons to Ukraine and claimed only humanitarian aid.
At the beginning of the war, there were Azerbaijani MiG-29s in Ukraine, which were being repaired in Lviv. The planes could survive a Russian attack on the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant in March 2022, its main hangar destroyed. The plant was a priority target for Russia because it was the only one in the country capable of overhauling MiG-29s. The planes themselves were inherited by Azerbaijan from Ukraine, it bought 15 used MiG-29s from it. Ukraine received them after the collapse of the USSR.
In the summer of 2022, military blogger Caucasuswar published a photo of three Azerbaijani fighter jets under repair at the Lviv Aircraft Repair Plant. After the start of the invasion, the planes could probably have been transferred to the Ukrainian army.
The appearance of former Azerbaijani MiG-29s in the Ukrainian Air Force coincided with a sharp deterioration in relations between Baku and Moscow. In the summer of 2025, dozens of ethnic Azeris were detained in Russia and several died, prompting a harsh reaction from Baku. Another irritant was the shooting down of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in 2024. The Embraer 190 airliner, flying from Baku to Grozny, went down near Aktau airport in Kazakhstan. Thirty-nine of the 67 people who were on board died.
With this background, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Al Arabiya that the country had been under "occupation" during the Soviet Union and emphasized that Moscow was still being aggressive. He expressed "deep disappointment" at Russia's response to the crash of the Azerbaijani airliner and called the torture and killing of members of the diaspora "an unprecedented act against our people." "We respond constructively and legally, but we will never tolerate displays of aggression or disrespect," Aliyev said.
Ukraine had about 50 MiG-29s at the start of the war, but 31 of them were destroyed, according to OSINT group Oryx. Ukraine has been receiving MiG-29s from NATO allies. Poland has transferred 14 MiG-29s to Ukraine, while Slovakia has transferred 13. In March 2023, four Slovak fighters flew to Ukraine, becoming the first officially delivered tactical aircraft since the invasion began. Despite the arrival of more modern F-16s and Mirage 2000s, the MiG-29 remains a key aircraft for the Ukrainian Air Force: spare parts and trained crew can be found for it.