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| Polish Prime Minister Tusk refused to provide Ukraine with Patriot air defense systems |
| 2024-04-19 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [Regnum] Poland is not ready and does not have the capabilities to supply Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems for air and missile defense to Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Polish television on April 18. “As you know, Germany set an example by transferring another Patriot system to Ukraine, and called on other countries to join this initiative. This time this does not apply to Poland, since we do not have enough Patriots to be able to share,” he said following a meeting of the European Council. Donald Tusk added that the Dutch authorities, in turn, announced their readiness to allocate funds from their own budget for the purchase of one Patriot air defense system for subsequent transfer to Ukraine. On April 18, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmitry Kuleba, on the sidelines of a meeting of G7 diplomats in Rome, said that Kiev needs additional air defense systems, such as the American Patriot and the French-Italian SampT. According to him, only these systems are capable of intercepting ballistic missiles that the Russian Armed Forces use to attack Ukrainian military infrastructure. As Regnum reported, on Thursday the head of the German defense-industrial company Deihl Defense Helmut Rauch said that Germany will soon transfer to Ukraine several IRIS-T SLM air defense systems with a range of up to 40 kilometers. The Russian side has repeatedly called on Western countries to refrain from supplying weapons to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized that any military cargo intended for the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a legitimate goal of the Russian Armed Forces. Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, in turn, noted that arms supplies will not change the course of the special military operation in any way, but will only deplete the resources of the countries participating in supporting Ukraine. |
| Posted by:badanov |