BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday pressed member countries to give more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated Kyiv’s almost daily appeals for more Western air defense equipment.
Russia’s air force is vastly more powerful than Ukraine’s, but sophisticated missile systems provided by Kyiv’s Western partners are a major threat to Russian aviation as the Kremlin’s forces slowly push forward along the around 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in the war.
Stoltenberg declined to say which NATO nations have air defense systems or how many might be available, saying that this is classified information, but he insisted that he expects the countries to make new announcements of support soon, not only Patriots.
Patriot missile batteries can take two years to make, so countries that have them can be reluctant for security reasons to leave themselves exposed.
NATO keeps track of the stocks of weapons held by its 32 member countries to ensure that they are able to execute the organization’s defense plans in times of need.
But Stoltenberg said that if dropping below the guidelines is “the only way NATO allies are able to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themself, well that’s a risk we have to take.”
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