The US is going to close all open orders from other countries for Patriot air defense systems and their missiles for shipment to Ukraine. Systems intended for other countries will be redirected to protect Ukrainian cities.
This is reported by the Financial Times.
The publication reports that this became known after US President Joe Biden last week in Italy undertook to supply additional air defense systems to Ukraine, which related, in particular, to Patriot missile batteries, which Kyiv requested from its partners after another increase in missile and drone attacks by russia on the Ukrainian energy system.
Biden said that five countries have already agreed to send Patriot and other air defense systems to Ukraine, and that "other countries that are waiting for the delivery of American systems will have to wait, because everything we have will go to Ukraine until its needs will be satisfied". He also added that Kyiv will start receiving more systems "relatively quickly". The publication notes that such an announcement by Biden guarantees that Ukraine will receive Patriot systems.
Poland, Romania and Germany and Spain still reportedly have open orders for Patriot systems, and the NATO coalition placed an order for 1,000 Patriot missiles in January.
Spain, Greece and Romania have Patriot in service, but so far they do not allow to redirect their orders to Ukraine. Poland has said its Patriots are protecting infrastructure used to deliver Western weapons across its border into Ukraine, which is why they have already been deployed.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on June 2, the Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, said that Bucharest is discussing the possibility of transferring the Patriot air defense complex to Ukraine.
On April 8, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed hope that NATO countries will be able to find six more Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine.
It will be recalled that on April 23, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba announced that Kyiv is negotiating the provision of four MIM-104 Patriot batteries to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
We also wrote that according to Greek media, the Greek government is ready to provide Ukraine with one Patriot air defense system in exchange for "security guarantees" from the US.
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