“The EU is pressuring Greece and Spain to give S-300 and Patriot to Ukraine,” says a Financial Times article

Greece and Spain are under intense pressure to give Ukraine more air defense systems, such as the Patriot and S-300.

According to a Financial Times report, the European Union and NATO are pressuring Greece and Spain to give Ukraine Patriot and S-300 as part of today’s meeting of EU Foreign Ministers to boost military aid in Kiev.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote yesterday on the social networking platform X (formerly Twitter) commenting on the non-supply of Western Patriot air defense systems that: “Air defense systems can be called “patriots” only when they save lives and not when they are stationary somewhere stored in bases”.

The arguments

The Financial Times reports that European leaders during a recent Summit in Brussels urged both Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to grant certain air defense systems to Ukraine, such as the Patriot and S-300 missile systems (in the Greek case), with a basic argument that Greece and Spain do not need them the way Ukraine does and that they face no imminent threat.

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A source told the Financial Times that “we all know who has them, we all know where they are and we all know who really needs them”, while it is understood that there has also been pressure, to a lesser extent, on Poland and Romania to consider the delivery of their own Patriot air defense missile systems to Ukraine.

“Ukraine wants the Greek S-300s”

European officials stressed that even more pressure will be applied at today’s meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg, as Ukraine has expressed particular interest in the Greek S-300s, as the Ukrainian military forces have such air defense systems and are already familiar with the operation and their use.

“There are countries that don’t have an immediate need for their air defense systems, to be quite honest, and each country has to decide what they can give up,” one European diplomat told the Financial Times.

Both the Greek and the Spanish Ministry of Defense refused to comment on this information, the Financial Times characteristically reports, while recalling that Pedro Sanchez had stated in March, after the meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that Spain “will offer new possibilities in 2024 to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.”

Source: onalert.gr