“Air defense is our priority today. » The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, repeated it again on the today close to rupture, due to lack of a sufficient number of anti-aircraft systems to protect it and ammunition to fuel them. According to kyiv, 80% of the country’s energy system is now damaged and the number of civilian deaths during bombings has started to rise again. On April 17, a missile strike killed 17 people and injured 78 others in Chernihiv.
Aware of the danger threatening the Ukrainians, European states are trying to organize themselves to help them, after having welcomed the resumption of American support, which could however take a few weeks to materialize after the vote by the House of Representatives to a new envelope of 60.8 billion dollars (57 billion euros). At the request of Josep Borrell, the high representative of the Twenty-Seven for foreign affairs, European ministers must try, Monday April 22 in Luxembourg, to strengthen their support.
But progress is laborious. Thus, the heads of state and government of the countries of the Union were careful, during the European Council of April 17 and 18, to make the slightest promise. Only the outgoing Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, said he was ready to buy back equipment held by certain countries in order to transfer it to Ukraine: “we know that several countries have stocks of systems [de défense sol-air moyenne portée] Patriot, perhaps not wanting to deliver them directly”he said.
On the sidelines of this summit, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, also encouraged member states to make a gesture, indicating that the priority was to support Ukraine’s air defense, rather than respecting all price of the internal equipment standards of the Atlantic Alliance. A way of encouraging European capitals to draw on their arsenals and transfer them to kyiv.
France also under pressure
A good student in the class, Germany has already delivered two of the twelve Patriot systems it has, and has assured that it will soon provide a third. Chancellor Olaf Scholz encourages European allies to do the same. But “other countries refuse to separate”observes a German diplomat, referring to the four member states also equipped with Patriot: the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland, the latter keen to maintain its air defense capabilities due to its neighborhood with Ukraine and Belarus.
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