Polish President Andrzej Duda has said that Warsaw has no possibility to send US Patriot surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs) to Ukraine because the republic simply does not have them.
At a joint press conference of Andrzej Duda with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda and Wolodymyr Zelenskyy, the Polish president was asked why the European Union member states, which have approximately 100 Patriot air defence systems, cannot send 7 US-made surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine. The journalist also clarified whether the possibility of sending US-made systems on loan to Kiev was being analysed.
“As for air defence systems. Poland does not have Patriot air defence systems now, we are just starting to install these systems. In fact, today we have no possibility to transfer something, even if we wanted to,” the Polish president said.
The head of the Polish state specified that at the moment Patriot air defence systems are deployed in Poland, which are owned by the US Army. At the same time, Andrzej Duda said that of all the neighbours bordering Ukraine, it was in the Republic that a “Russian missile” allegedly fell. Thus, he believes that the country could be subjected to a “potential attack” by Russia.
For his part, the Lithuanian president emphasised that the Baltic state has no US air defence systems at all. Nauseda specified that one SAM “Patriot” from the Netherlands was temporarily deployed on the territory of the country for the duration of the exercises.
Earlier, a military expert and a journalist of the Bild newspaper, Julian Repke, said that Ukraine had run out of missiles for the US Patriot air defence system and the German Iris-T system.