The spanish government will supply a batch of Patriot missiles to Ukraine to defend itself from Russian attacks, as advanced this Friday ‘The country‘ and sources from the Executive have confirmed to laSexta. Each of these projectiles is valued at more than one million euros and they have a ceiling of 24 kilometers and a range of 150 kilometers.

The decision that comes, according to the aforementioned newspaper, before the pressure from NATO and the European Union and after the Ministry of Defense has refused to give Kyiv the battery which is deployed on the border between Türkiye and Syria. Spain has three of these systems, acquired second-hand from Germany, one of which has been in Turkey since 2013.

According to ‘El País’, Defense has refused to send this battery currently deployed in Turkish territory because these systems are the only ones effective against a missile attack and the Armed Forces’ staffing is low. As compensation, it has agreed to provide Patriot missiles, although their number will be very limitedbecause the Spanish reserve is around fifty and they are very expensive.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskymoved this month to the Atlantic Alliance that Ukraine needs at least seven Patriots or other high-end air defense systems to confront Russian air attacks, thus urging its allies to increase military aid to Kyiv, according to the Reuters agency.

This same Monday, EU ministers said they were studying how supply more air defense systems to the country, but they made concrete promises about the Patriot systems, the ones most desired by Kyiv.

According to the same agency, Greece has already ruled out supplying this type of systems defense to Ukraine. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis indicated this in an interview on Thursday in which he explained that the Greek country cannot do so because these systems are “critical” to its capabilities.