The foreign ministers of the European Union member states have said that they will try to solve the problem of Ukraine’s shortage of air defence systems in the “shortest possible time” without providing specific initiatives on this issue. This was reported by the Reuters news agency.
“European Union ministers said on Monday they were urgently considering how to provide Ukraine with more air defences, but they made no concrete promises on the Patriot systems that Kiev values most,” the report said.
The agency highlighted that since Kiev called on Western allies to provide Ukraine with more Western air defence systems, Germany has become the only EU country to promise to provide an additional Patriot battery to the former Soviet republic.
“Officials say it is difficult to part with Patriot because they are an integral part of national defence,” Reuters elaborated.
According to Reuters, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Greece possess US Patriot SAMs.
In a commentary to the agency, Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonsson argued that he was reluctant to supply Kiev with US SAMs because Stockholm had already agreed to send Ukraine the RBS 70 system. Asked whether the Kingdom would also provide Patriot, he said: “I do not rule out such a possibility <…>”.
Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis also spoke negatively about the transfer of Patriot systems to Kiev because of the threat from Turkey. According to the Greek politician, Athens “will not take any action that will at least minimally jeopardise our deterrence potential or air defence”.
Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Warsaw had no possibility to send US Patriot surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine because the country simply does not have them.
