The United States’ agreement with NATO countries to provide Ukraine with a series of powerful air defense systems can bring more trouble to Russia.
After much controversy, The US and NATO agreed to provide Ukraine with very powerful air defense systems, even high-performance mobile, and long-range missile complexes.
Specifically, in the near future, the US along with a number of countries of the North Atlantic treaty organisation (NATO) intend to transfer unspecified amount of short, medium-range, and long range. air defense missile systems to Ukraine
It is expected that the above weapons will be able to create an opportunity for Ukraine to close its airspace to Russian military aviation. CNN reported that we are talking about supplying Ukraine with the Osa, Strela, S-300P and S-300V complexes.
While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is about to ask the US Congress for more military support for his country, Washington, along with its NATO ally, is ready to send several air defense systems to Ukraine to help protect the country.
“According to a senior US official, these additional systems include Soviet-era mobile air defense systems such as the SA-8 Gecko (Osa air defense system), the SA-10 (the S-300PS). ), SA-12 (S-300V air defense system) and SA-14 (MANPADS Strela-3)”.
“The range of these anti-aircraft missile systems is much longer than that of the FIM-92 Stinger man-portable missiles previously delivered by the US to Ukraine, which makes them capable of hitting cruise missiles.”
“According to a senior US official, Washington has received the above systems from NATO partner countries and they are on their way to Ukraine. It is not clear at this time that these systems will be returned to the supplying country after the end of the war,” CNN reported.
With the newly revealed information, it is almost certain that the US is asking NATO countries that were once members of the Warsaw military bloc and still maintain Soviet-type weapons to cede their air defense complexes.
This also coincides with previous information released by CNN itself, that the US State Department is looking for S-300 air defense missiles around the world to urgently aid Ukraine.
Maybe the US will compensate the country supplying these weapons with a much more advanced Patriot missile defense system, or Washington will simply pay them as a normal commercial contract.
Slovakia’s defense minister said on Thursday that his country was willing to provide Ukraine with S-300 air defenses if NATO allies find a substitute, but his visiting U.S. counterpart told reporters he had nothing to announce on that.
Although the above-mentioned Soviet-era anti-aircraft missile complexes are very old, they still prove particularly dangerous, making it impossible for Russian military aircraft to ignore.
On the Ukrainian battlefield, it was the SA-8 or Buk-M1 complexes that shot down a lot of Russian low-altitude attack and armed helicopters, their actual combat performance was even more impressive than the S-300.
Previously, Russia had warned NATO and the US of the consequences of supplying Ukraine with a variety of weapons, but apparently the Alliance decided to ignore it because they believed that Moscow would not be able to take such a step.
In addition to anti-aircraft missiles, Ukraine has not given up hope of receiving fighter aircraft from NATO specially MiG-29 from Poland. While Biden administration continues to reject Poland’s offer to send MiG-29 jet fighters to Ukraine despite President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated pleas for the warplanes to help his country repel the Russian invasion.