BERLIN/WARSAW (Reuters) – Germany said on Friday it was discussing with ally Poland a request to send German Patriot air defense units to Ukraine, after the NATO chief said the military alliance might not object to such a decision.
“We are discussing with our allies how to deal with Poland’s proposal,” a German government spokesman told reporters in Berlin.
Berlin offered Warsaw the Patriot system to help secure its airspace after a stray missile crashed and killed two people in Poland last week. Then Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak asked Germany to send firefighting units to Ukraine instead.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said these deployments should be national decisions, with end-user rules in mind.
“Specific decisions on specific systems are national decisions,” he told reporters in Brussels.
“Sometimes there are agreements with end users and other things, so they have to consult with other allies. But ultimately (the decision) has to be made by national governments.”
Stoltenberg’s comments came after German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Thursday that the participation of German national units outside NATO territory requires prior discussions with NATO and its allies.
Patriot missiles produced by the American company Raytheon (RTX.N).
Vendredi, the president of Poland, declared that Allemagne decided on the units of defense of the Patriot seraient station, adjoutant that this serait was preferable for the protection of Pologne that had been trouvented by the solstice of Ukraine. the border.
“From a military point of view, it would be better if they were present in Ukraine to protect Polish lands as well, they would protect both Ukraine and Poland more effectively,” Andrzej Duda said at a press conference in Kaunas, Lithuania. But the decision is up to the German side.
Duda later said Germany could send Patriot units to Ukraine without NATO forces to operate them, something he says Kyiv has been asking for some time.
“But if there is no consent for this, let him be here (in Poland) and protect us,” Duda wrote on Twitter.
On the sidelines of NATO exercises in northeastern Poland, Blaszczak took a jab in Berlin saying he was taken aback by the idea that the German patriots might be too advanced to be moved to Ukraine.
“These are the old patriots and the Polish version is the most recent,” he said, adding that “the claim that the old German patriots are very advanced is incorrect”.
Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold, Bart Meagher and Miranda Murray; Additional reporting by Alain Sharlich, Pawel Florkiewicz, Anna Wladarczak Simczuk in Warsaw; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Philippa Fletcher, and William Maclean
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
