On April 11, at a plenary session in Brussels, Belgium, the European Parliament (EP) refused to approve the budget for the European Council until the agency provided additional Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine.
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| EP believes that European countries must support Patriot complexes for Ukraine (Source: US Army) |
According to The Kyiv Independent , Belgian MP Guy Verhofstadt proposed to remove the topic of budget approval from the agenda. He emphasized that European countries must first support Ukraine by finding and providing 7 Patriot complexes to Kiev.
Mr Verhofstadt's proposal received strong support from 515 MEPs. However, the proposal has been postponed until the next session.
Despite the above pressure, on the same day, in a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, the two presidents Gitanas Nauseda (Lithuania) and Andrzej Duda (Poland) said they could not transfer any Patriot systems to Kiev.
Asked why the European Union (EU) could not transfer to Ukraine 5-7 of the 100 Patriot systems it currently possesses, Mr. Duda replied: "Poland currently does not have Patriots. We have just started installing these systems," Polish news agency PAP reported.
“In fact, we are currently not in a position to transfer anything, even if we wanted to,” the leader said.
According to President Duda, the Patriot systems deployed in the country are from the US military, noting that, among all Ukraine's neighbors, a "Russian missile" allegedly fell on Poland so his country is under threat.
Meanwhile, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda reiterated that the country does not have any Patriot systems, a battery of this air defense system from the Netherlands will be temporarily deployed in the country but for training purposes.
He said it was increasingly difficult for Western countries to provide Ukraine with air defense and missile systems. Europe itself was currently not fully supplied with these weapons.
Earlier, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for a review of the supply of Patriot missile defense systems in Europe and around the world , as Berlin's reserves for delivery to Kiev were almost exhausted. She admitted that the Ukrainian army had run out of ammunition for most of its air defense systems.
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