What does a Financial Times report say?
Greece and Spain are under intense pressure from their EU and NATO allies to provide more air defense systems to Ukraine, as Kiev prepares to demand more help at a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers today, Monday.
This month Kiev did urgent appeal to Western allies for seven additional air defense systems, such as American-made ones Patriot or the soviet ones S-300as Russia steps up an air and missile campaign against the country’s cities and power infrastructure.
The president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media platform X on Sunday: “Patriots can only be called air defense systems if they are working and saving lives instead of standing still in storage bases somewhere.”
Only the Germany announced shipment of a Patriot system.
Other EU leaders used last week’s Brussels summit to personally press the Spanish and Greek prime ministers Pedro Sanchez and Kyriakos Mitsotakis respectively to donate some of their systems to Ukraine, according to Financial Times sources briefed on the discussions.
The two leaders, whose armed forces have more than twelve Patriot systems plus others like the S-300, heard that their needs were not as great as Ukraine’s and that they faced no imminent threat.
“We all know who has themwe all know where they are and we all know who really needs them,” one of the sources said.
Officials said less pressure is being put on the Poland and the Romaniawhich also have Patriots, to consider sending them to Kiev, given their more vulnerable position on the border with Ukraine.
Ukraine currently has at least three Patriot systemsincluding one procured from the US and two from Germany, before Berlin’s announcement last week.
Kiev also operates long-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the former Soviet Union, including S-300 and S-200. An improved version of the latter was used to shoot down a Russian long-range strategic bomber Tu-22M3 over Russia’s Stavropol Krai region last week, according to Ukrainian officials.
Anti-aircraft systems are likely to be included in the new US aid package approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday.
Pressure to donate systems will intensify when foreign and defense ministers from all 27 EU member states meet in Luxembourg on Monday, officials told the Financial Times. Kiev is considered to be particularly interested in the old systems S-300 of Greecewhich the Ukrainian forces already have in their arsenal and for which they have experience.
“There are countries that don’t have an immediate need for their air defense systems, to be quite honest,” said an EU diplomat involved in preparations for the meeting. “Each country is called to decide what can he dispose of’.
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