The Ukrainian side is working to directly contract the procurement of anti-ballistic missiles, Minister of Defense of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov said, expressing confidence that this will be achieved in the near future.
He stated this at a joint press conference with his Swedish counterpart Pål Jonson in Kyiv on Wednesday, responding to a question from an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent regarding work to secure PAC-3 missiles.
"Right now we are working to directly contract the procurement of PAC-3, which has never happened before. And I am confident we will manage to do this in the near future," Fedorov said.
The minister emphasized separately that Ukraine continues to receive missiles from American partners, but they are insufficient to fully secure the Ukrainian air defense system.
According to Fedorov, Ukraine "has a concrete plan on how to attract additional missiles and fight for every single missile," and the Ukrainian side also has "some non-obvious solutions."
"The Swedish Defense Minister and I just spoke with the president about this yesterday. We have some non-obvious solutions on how to do this, how to involve other partners who have never provided us with PAC-3 before. We are working on this 24/7. Our task is to ensure there are more of these missiles," the defense minister stated.
In the context of PAC-2 GEM-T (Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical) missiles, which also suit Ukraine, and anti-ballistic PAC-3 missiles, Fedorov recalled a contract with Germany.
"First, thanks to Germany, we concluded a large contract for hundreds of these missiles, deliveries of which will begin next year. But we want to borrow these missiles from some countries right now, so to speak, in order to return them later," he added.
However, as the minister emphasized, work to secure missiles from European Union stockpiles "is very difficult work."
"We simply asked for one, two, three missiles from each country. And, in the end, we received a certain number, several dozen. They helped us repel Russian attacks in February-March. We are continuing this work. But, of course, we plan to receive more missiles due to the fact that we will have direct contracts," he stated.
Therefore, the minister concluded, Ukraine is moving along two tracks regarding missiles: 1) attempting to contract and "gather" PAC-2 and PAC-3 from stockpiles as much as possible; 2) creating its own anti-ballistic missile.
"I cannot disclose details and specific figures so as not to give our enemy additional information. But I will say this: it is a very difficult track with maximum involvement from our president, who also takes specific actions every day to ensure we have additional missiles," Fedorov emphasized.
As reported, ten documents were signed in April during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Germany. In particular, the Ministry of Defense signed two contracts: with the American company Raytheon for the supply of PAC-2 missiles, and with the German weapons manufacturer Diehl Defence for IRIS-T systems.
