Biden announces intentions of 5 countries to supply Ukraine with Patriot SAMs
Ukraine’s five partner countries can help Ukrainian defenders protect the skies with Patriot systems.
This was stated by US President Joe Biden during a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the occasion of the signing of the security agreement.
Patriot for Ukraine
– We have the support of five countries to provide Patriot systems. We are also letting the countries that are waiting for us to deliver Patriot in the future know that they will have to wait. We will be transferring everything to Ukraine now. Everything that we have will be transferred to Ukraine, and only later will we proceed to fulfil our contractual obligations to other countries,” Biden said.
For his part, Volodymyr Zelenskyy reminded that Ukraine currently needs 7 such air defence systems.
– “We urgently need 7 Patriot systems. We discussed the possibility of getting 5 of them, it’s true, and we are working on it. This does not mean that we will have them tomorrow, but we see good results for Ukraine in the near future,” Zelenskyy said.
As a reminder, during the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine’s Defence, better known as the Ramstein format, the issue of air defence was one of the priorities for Ukraine’s partners.
At the same time, the US Secretary of Defence said that there will be no transfer of Patriot systems to Ukraine, which are on duty in Poland to cover US troops, as previously reported by the NYT.
