How Ukraine’s Fighter Fleet Was Just Reinforced with MiG-29s From Azerbaijan

The Ukrainian Air Force has begun to operate MiG-29 fighters procured from Azerbaijan, as the Central Asian state has retired the ageing Soviet-built aircraft from service. The emergence of footage showing the fighters in Ukrainain service closely follows a rise in tensions between Azerbaijan and Russia, as the former has aligned itself increasingly closely with Turkey and other NATO members in support of the Ukrainian war effort. It remains uncertain how many former Azerbaijan Air Force MiG-29s are currently in Ukrainian service, although the Eastern European country has received MiG-29s from Poland and Slovakia in the past to replenish combat losses. The Ukrainain fighter fleet has also been bolstered by the delivery of ageing Cold War era F-16 fighters by the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, as well as with Mirage 2000 fighters delivered by France.

At the time of the outbreak of full scale hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022 three Azerbaijan Air Force MiG-29s were undergoing repairs and modernisation at the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant. It remains uncertain whether permission may have been recently granted by Azerbaijan’s government to induct the aircraft into Ukrainain Air Force service, and whether they were provided as aid or sold. Azerbaijan in September 2024 received its first Chinese JF-17 Block III fighters, which are significantly more sophisticated ‘4+ generation’ aircraft that are replacing its MiG-29s in service. The deliveries of these aircraft may have been a key factor allowing Azerbaijan to grant Ukraine permission to use its older MiG-29s. Although the modern MiG-29M and its derivative the MiG-35 remain highly capable fighters, Cold War era MiG-29s are considered long since obsolete, and are primarily valued for their limited air-to-ground capabilities in the Ukrainian theatre.

None of the fighter classes delivered to Ukraine are considered capable of matching the performance of the Su-27 air superiority fighters which the country inherited after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and according to Ukrainian Air Force officials they remain far from capable of going head to head with modern Russian fighters such as the Su-35. As by far the most widely fielded fighter class in the Ukrainian fleet, MiG-29s have taken particularly significant losses in air-to-air combat while achieving no confirmed kills against manned Russian aircraft. A particularly intensive ten days of air battles in October 2023 reportedly saw 17 MiG-29s shot down in air-to-air engagements with Russian fighters. Despite the aircraft’s limitations, in the early weeks of the war Ukrainian government and Western media sources widely reported that a MiG-29 piloted by a local ace, named the ‘Ghost of Kiev,’ gained tremendous numbers of kills against Russian fighters, although it was was later widely confirmedthat these narratives had been false and were propagated to boost morale.