Poland says Ukraine has come back with a fresh offer to trade its retiring MiG-29 fighter jets for Ukrainian drones, though the entire account so far rests on Warsaw's word. The exchange has been announced, abandoned, and revived several times over the past year.

Ukraine still leans on its worn Soviet-era MiG-29s for air defense and strikes while it shifts to a mixed Western fleet of F-16s, Mirages, and incoming Gripens. Warsaw's 2023 handover of MiG-29s helped Kyiv replace jets lost in combat and keep its aging fighters flying with Western missiles and bombs.

Warsaw's latest version of events

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said Ukraine returned to negotiations and sent Poland a concrete proposal naming which drones it would hand over, according to PAP. She spoke on Radio Zet on 30 July. The document, she said, has sat with the ministry for several days.

Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz will decide once his officials study it, and Sobkowiak-Czarnecka expects the matter to close within a few weeks at most. 

"We send the MiGs, the Ukrainian side hands over drones. That is the offer on the table today," she said.

The jets are Soviet-era, flown by Poland since the late 1980s and leaving service as F-35s and FA-50s replace them. Poland already sent Ukraine more than a dozen MiG-29s after the 2022 invasion. Ukrainian pilots fly the type and have adapted their jets to carry Western precision weapons.

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The repair demand dropped

Earlier, Poland said Kyiv had pressed it to pay for overhauling the aging jets. Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said that demand is now gone and the arrangement is a straight swap. Poland remains ready to help modernize the aircraft if Ukraine asks, she said, but the cost would fall on Ukraine or on allied states willing to cover it. 

Bulgaria also wants them, Poland says

Asked why Poland does not sell the jets to Bulgaria, which had shown interest, Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said Warsaw pursued the exchange with Ukraine first. Days earlier, another deputy minister said Poland had received a fresh request from an unnamed NATO country asking for the same fighters. 

A deal that keeps dying and coming back

Poland first floated handing over six to eight retiring MiG-29s in December 2025. In January, Warsaw planned a February transfer, and days later the government approved up to nine jets.

Then it fell apart. In late June, Kosiniak-Kamysz refused to send them, accusing Kyiv of walking away from the drone-technology side of the bargain. In early July, Warsaw said it would scrap the jets instead. The minister soon said the question stayed open, and by 10 July the sides had restarted talks.

A Romanian Air Force fighter jet shot down a drone over the country's Black Sea waters for the third time in three days, President Nicușor Dan announced. The repeated interceptions mark a shift for Romania, which for years only tracked or escorted uncrewed aircraft that drifted across its border during Russia's attacks on Ukraine. Bucharest is now preparing a diplomatic protest to Moscow, after prosecutors identified one of the downed drones as a Russian attack drone.

Third shootdown in three days

A Romanian F-16 shot down the drone at 10:13 on 26 July over territorial waters near the Sulina–Chilia area in the Danube delta, Dan wrote on X. It came down over the sea, off Romania's coast.

A Russian Shahed and a protest to Moscow

Romania's General Prosecutor's Office identified the drone downed on 24 July as a Shahed, the type Russia launches at Ukraine, Dan said. Investigations into the drones shot down on 25 and 26 July are still underway, and Romania's diplomatic protest to Russia will rest on those findings.

"It is inadmissible and intolerable for the Russian Federation to keep violating Romania's airspace, which is at the same time the airspace of NATO and the European Union," Dan said. "Such actions are unacceptable, and we treat them with the utmost seriousness, together with our allies."

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From escorting to firing

Romania downed its first drone on 24 July, when an F-16 fired on an intruder over uninhabited land northeast of Bucharest. It was the first known time a Romanian jet had destroyed a drone in the country's airspace, ending years of only escorting strays. A second drone came the next day, again shot down away from homes near the Ukrainian border.

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The country's pilots had already fired beyond their own skies, too. In May 2026, a Romanian F-16 on NATO's Baltic patrol carried out the first such shootdown over Estonia. Russian drones have repeatedly crossed into Romanian airspace during attacks on Ukraine, and the country has also faced naval drones in its territorial waters.

For the first known time, a Romanian fighter jet has fired on and destroyed a drone that violated the country's airspace. The intercept happened during a large Russian overnight attack on Ukraine that pushed some of the explosive drones toward the Romanian border. Bucharest has not said where the drone came from.

Russia's missiles and explosive drones batter Ukrainian homes and civilian infrastructure night after night, and some of those drones wander across borders into NATO states, where allied jets only lately opened fire after years of merely tracking them.

A pilot, an empty field, and an air-to-air missile

Romanian President Nicușor Dan announced the shootdown on X, saying a pilot flying an F-16 downed the drone around 11:00 on 24 July 2026. He noted the target fell over an uninhabited area, so the pilot could fire without endangering anyone below. 

"At present, specialist teams from the relevant agencies are surveying the area to establish all the circumstances of the incident," Dan said some 30 minutes after the strike.

Romania's Defense Ministry detailed the sequence. Radar detected the drone at 09:39, roughly 20 km east of Sulina in the Danube delta. It then entered national airspace and flew a Sulina–Brăila–Fetești–Buzău route. Two Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon jets on a NATO air policing mission from Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase went up, along with two Romanian F-16s from the 86th airbase at Fetești. At 11:02, one of the Romanian jets struck the drone with an air-to-air missile over an uninhabited area near Padina, in Buzău county.

The drone's flight path points to the Black Sea as its way in — the same route Russian drones tend to take when they go after the nearby Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail.

Until now, Romanian jets had only escorted a Russian drone near the Ukrainian border until it disappeared from radars. Overnight on 29 May, during a Russian attack on Odesa Oblast, a Geran-2 drone crashed into a 10-story residential building in Galați, hospitalizing two people and forcing 70 to evacuate.

Russia's overnight barrage on Ukraine

The intercept coincided with one of Russia's mass overnight strikes. Ukraine's Air Force reported that Russia launched 180 strike drones — Shahed types, including jet-powered ones, plus Gerbera, Italmas, and Parodiya decoy drones — and five X-59/69 guided missiles by preliminary count from the Black Sea areas, Russian regions and occupied territory. By 08:00, air defenses had downed or suppressed 160 drones and four missiles, though one missile and 14 drones hit across nine locations.

In Odesa Oblast, a Russian strike on a residential sector injured a woman and a child overnight, damaging an apartment roof, homes, cars, and an enterprise, the head of the Odesa Oblast military administration, Oleh Kiper, reported. 

"The residential sector and industrial infrastructure were struck. Unfortunately, a woman and a 4-year-old child were injured," he said. 

Farther south, Russia hit the Izmail district — the part of Odesa Oblast bordering Romania — damaging homes and a business without casualties, the district military administration said.

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Russian aerial bombs struck Izium in Kharkiv Oblast, hitting a Nova Poshta parcel depot and cutting power to part of the district. Four Geran drones set a boarding house in Radychiv, Chernihiv Oblast, ablaze, and the State Emergency Service noted the site was not in use. An evening attack damaged a house and an enterprise in Kirovohrad Oblast, without casualties, the regional administration said.

Ukraine's plan to buy 16 French-made Rafale fighter jets remains unsigned, the aircraft's manufacturer said. France has yet to lock down either the terms of the purchase or how it will be paid for. The comments put a hard limit on a deal that European leaders had unveiled with fanfare 10 days earlier.

No signature, no financing

Dassault Aviation chief executive Éric Trappier addressed the deal at the company's half-year results, French daily Le Figaro reported. Trappier said Ukraine had expressed an intention to buy 16 Rafales, but the contract was not signed. The French state, he said, still had to formalize the deal and its financing.

Dassault handed over 12 Rafales to customers in the first half of 2026. Ten went to foreign clients, and two went to the French military. A year earlier, the company delivered seven over the same period, four of them abroad. The company booked no new firm Rafale orders at all in the first half of 2026. 

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Where the Rafale sits in Ukraine's jet plans

The Rafale is the least-settled of Ukraine's three Western fighter tracks. Kyiv's pilots already fly American F-16s, delivered since August 2024, and are due their first Swedish Gripens in early 2027. Sixteen older Gripen C/D jets are set to arrive first, with a larger buy of newer models to follow.

The French jets sit further out. France set their delivery for 2028-2029, which would make the Rafale the last of the three types to enter Ukrainian service. Kyiv is assembling all three at once to retire its Soviet-era fleet, a mix that stretches pilot training and maintenance across incompatible aircraft.

Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

A Russian SU-25 fighter jet reportedly crashed over Donetsk Oblast on June 13, Russian social media channels reported.

Videos posted on social media of the purported crash by bloggers with close ties to the Russian Air Force appear to show the plane crashing into a field after closely being followed by another fighter jet. The circumstances of the crash remain unclear as rumours swirl of Russian 'friendly fire' as a potential cause of the crash.

The Kyiv Independent cannot independently verify the crash or the details surrounding it. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian military have commented on the reported crash.

The Su-25, a Soviet-designed close-air support aircraft developed by Sukhoi in the late 1970s, is built for battlefield survivability. It features heavy armor and can withstand enemy fire.

The aircraft has been widely used in various conflicts, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and, more recently, in Ukraine, where both Russian and Ukrainian forces operate the platform.

Ukraine has downed multiple Russian Su-25s throughout the war. On Feb. 8, Ukraine's military reported shooting down a Russian Su-25 near the town of Toretsk in Donetsk Oblast.

In another instance, Russia's Defense Ministry said on on March 24 that Russian Su-25 attack aircraft crashed during a routine training flight in Primorye Krai in Russia's Far East.

The incident comes less than two week following Ukraine's 'Operation Spiderweb' in which Ukrainian drones smuggled deep inside Russia and hidden inside trucks struck as many as 41 Russian heavy bombers at four airfields across the country.

Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian MiG-29 strikes Russian drone hub, ammo depot in Zaporizhzhia direction, releases video

Key developments on June 13: * Ukrainian MiG-29 strikes Russian drone hub, ammo depot in Zaporizhzhia direction, releases video * Ukrainian military denies NYT claims about Russian presence in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast * Russia preparing strategic reserves for conflicts beyond Ukraine, Ukraine warns * Ukraine repatriates bodies of 1,200 citizens, soldiers under Istanbul deal

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk