EU & NATO demand that Greece & Spain provide Ukraine with air defense

Greece and Spain are under intense pressure from their EU and NATO allies to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems.

This is reported with reference to the Financial Times.

This month, Ukraine appealed to its Western allies with an urgent request for seven additional air defense systems, such as the US Patriot or the Soviet S-300, as Russia intensifies its air and missile campaign against the country's cities and energy infrastructure.

So far, only Germany has announced the delivery of one Patriot system. Other EU leaders used last week's summit in Brussels to personally urge Spanish and Greek Prime Ministers Pedro Sanchez and Kyriakos Mitsotakis to transfer some of their systems to Ukraine.

The leaders of the two countries, whose militaries have more than a dozen Patriot systems, as well as other systems such as the S-300, were told that their needs are not as great as Ukraine's and that they do not face an immediate threat.

"We all know who has them, we all know where they are located, and we all know who really needs them," said one of the sources.

According to officials, Poland and Romania, which also have Patriots, are under less pressure to consider supplying Kyiv, given their more vulnerable location on the border with Ukraine.

Ukraine currently has at least three Patriot systems, including one supplied by the United States and two received from Germany before Berlin's announcement last week.

It is worth noting that over the past month, the Russian occupiers have significantly intensified air attacks on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. In particular, Russia has been attacking targets on a large scale with ballistic missiles that can be shot down by only two air defense systems in the world - the American Patriot and the French-Italian SAMP/T.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that 25 Patriot systems are needed to completely block the skies over Ukraine from Russian missiles.

Author – Anastasiya Glotova, 22/04/2024