Greek defence minister denies his country secretly supplied weapons to Ukraine

Nikos Dendias, Minister of National Defence of Greece, has denied media reports that Greece has secretly sent 250 containers with weapons to Ukraine.

As reported by Ekathumerini, Greece has been supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine over the past two years, but has said that it was not in a position to give Ukraine weapons that it deems critical to its own defence. Greece has given Ukraine, either directly or via sales to Czechia, a number of 155-mm and 203-mm munitions as well as a large number of shells.

"There is no arms transfer to Ukraine," Dendias told Sia Anagnostopoulou, a New Left MP, during a parliamentary debate on a bill for the establishment of a Centre for Defence Innovations.

"We have not hidden to whom and what we are selling in the framework of the country’s international agreements. We sell obsolete material to the Czech Republic and the US while saving resources, given that the destruction of this material alone would exceed 100 million euros," Dendias said.

The debate took place following reports by the Greek newspaper Efimeritha ton Syntakton that Greek weapons were secretly being transferred to Ukraine via Romania, claiming that the first two containers of weapons were sent two days ago from the station in Kato Gefira, near Thessaloniki.

In April, media reported that Greece and Spain were under a lot of pressure from their allies in the EU and NATO to supply Ukraine with additional air defence systems.

Leaders of countries whose armed forces have more than 10 Patriot and S-300 air defence systems were told that their need for those systems is currently less urgent than Ukraine’s because they are not facing an immediate threat.

Pavlos Marinakis, the spokesman for the Greek government, said that his country has already given Ukraine and its people "substantial help".