dpa
Brussels
EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels are being urged to make good on promises they have made to Ukraine.
Arriving at the meeting on Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he intended to urge allies to deliver the air defence systems they have promised.
Air defence systems - such as the widely-used, US-made Patriots or the Italian SAMP/T system - have been a top priority for Western military aid to Ukraine in recent months. Several countries have promised to supply Ukraine with such systems. However, “some Patriot systems were announced and not delivered yet,” Kuleba told reporters on Thursday.
“I will urge all partners who have made their pledges to finally deliver these systems.” Kuleba said the waiting times between announcement and delivery are “sometimes excessively long.”That hurts Ukrainian military planning, he said. “You cannot calculate what you can count on and what you cannot count on.”
The latest round of commitments to supply air defence systems to Ukraine came at a NATO summit in Washington in July.All of the European Union’s member states are members of NATO except for Ireland, Austria, Malta and Cyprus.
“So far no Patriot batteries that have been promised to Ukraine in Washington have been delivered,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters.
