The iconic Russian MiG-21 fighter jet is no longer used for air patrols in Europe. The Croatian Air Force, its last operator on the continent, retired its Soviet-era supersonic jets on Sunday, December 1.
While the four remaining MiG-21s will remain in the service’s inventory for the next few weeks, they will no longer be called upon to defend the country, a task that will fall to Italy’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Hungary’s Saab Gripen for about a year.
This is the time needed for the Croatian Air Force to complete training its pilots to fly the 12 Dassault Rafale fighters it has acquired, of which seven have already been delivered.
As a NATO member, Croatia can benefit from air patrols from its allied neighbors.
The Rafales are expected to take over the task between late 2025 and early 2026.
Massive presence behind the Iron Curtain
The MiG-21 is perhaps the most popular fighter developed by the Soviet Union. A single-engine delta wing with its characteristic air intake in the nose, the jet had around 11,500 units produced between 1959 and 1986.
During the Cold War, the fighter was operated by almost all countries behind the Iron Curtain and was a potential opponent of Western aircraft.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, however, started an intense movement to replace aircraft with more modern similar ones from the West.
However, some countries kept their MiG-21s active, such as Romania, which retired its last fighters in 2023, replacing them with F-16s and in the future with the F-35.
There are still other Russian types such as the MiG-29, which is active in Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia and Ukraine, but which are also in the process of being deactivated.
