The launchers that Warsaw does possess are under American control, the prime minister said
FILE PHOTO: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. © Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Poland doesn’t have any US-made Patriot missile systems available to donate to Ukraine, unlike some other NATO nations, Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated on Monday.
The long-range air defense system emerged this month as a priority item on Kiev’s wish list after Russia began targeting Ukrainian power stations with missile strikes in what it called retaliation for drone attacks on its oil infrastructure.
After an EU summit last week, Germany promised to provide an additional Patriot battery, which costs over a billion dollars. Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged other NATO members to donate more Patriot systems to Kiev.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg suggested that members of the US-led military bloc should prioritize arming Ukraine over meeting their own defense obligations to the organization, when he discussed the situation with air defense systems last Wednesday.
“We do not have such an option,” Tusk told journalists on Monday. The battery deployed near the city of Rzeszow “is under the control and disposal of the Americans” and protects southeastern Poland. Warsaw has no such systems to spare, according to the prime minister.
He touted Poland’s record of supporting Kiev against Moscow in other ways, calling it a job “done perfectly” and stating that there are many other weapons systems that can benefit Ukraine.
Senior Ukrainian officials have criticized Western arms donors for failing to deliver enough Patriot systems to defend their country. President Vladimir Zelensky has said that Kiev needed at least six to seven units, while Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has called out the US specifically, stating in an interview that “nobody in Ukraine would believe that the huge US Army doesn’t have at least one Patriot battery” to send.
“Behind closed doors, I tell all of our partners: ‘My dears, anything you want. You want to lease them, so be it. You want them to protect your border, they will. Just give them [to us],’” Kuleba explained last week.
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Moscow, which perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, has warned that no amount of Western weaponry will change the outcome and that the arms supplies merely prolong the bloodshed and stand in the way of achieving peace.
