Spain has agreed to supply a batch of Patriot missiles to the Ukrainian army amid pressure from NATO and the EU to help the Ukrainian government strengthen the country’s air defence. This was reported by the El País newspaper, citing government sources.
According to El País, the matter concerns the transfer of a limited number of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, given that the cost of each of them exceeds €1m. Spain has a total of about 50 missiles, and it is not specified how many of them Kiev will receive.
At the same time, the Spanish Defence Ministry refused to transfer to Kiev a Patriot battery, which has been deployed on the border between Syria and Turkey since 2013. Madrid has a total of three batteries, which were purchased in 2004 and 2014 from Germany. One of them is located in the city of Adana in southern Turkey, while the other two are at the Marine Corps base in Valencia. The newspaper noted that the latter are used for training Ukrainian and Spanish military personnel.
The refusal to supply the battery to the Ukrainian authorities in Spain was explained by the fact that Patriot are the only systems effective in repelling a missile attack, which was confirmed by military actions not only in Ukraine, but also in the Middle East, El País concluded.
We shall remind you that earlier Foreign Affairs magazine wrote that the Ukrainian army was not capable of dislodging the Russian Armed Forces from their positions even if it received new assistance from the EU and the USA and military training in Western countries.
