Poland and Russia are not exactly best mates right now (but then Russia only has three friends left and they’re all maniacal dictatorships).

However back in the 1960s Poland and Russia were rather closer, as – whilst Poland was never formally part of the Soviet Union – the influence of Russia’s Red Army taking control of Polish territory from Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War turned Poland into a communist satellite state.

It also led to the supply of (usually obsolete) Russian military hardware, including this; the MiG-17. Replaced by more modern supersonic aircraft in the Soviet Union, the MiG-17 was then produced under license in Poland, becoming the Lim-5 and Lim-6, and used all the way up to the 1990s.

This neat Lego replica of the rather funky-looking Cold War fighter is the work of [Maks], who – with the help of some strategic stickers – has created the Lim-6 ground-attack aircraft brilliantly.

There’s more to see at [Maks]’s ‘Lim-6bis’ album on Flickr, and you can fly back to 1960s Poland via the link in the text above.