Germany explains why it denies Patriots to Ukraine

Berlin has explained why it turned down Warsaw’s proposal to deliver US-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine instead of sending them to Poland. Germany lacks the authority to go it alone, a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official told Voice of America on Saturday.

The Patriot systems are part of NATO’s “collective defense system,” Tobias Lindner, a parliamentary secretary of state for the German Foreign Ministry, told the media outlet. The official explained that Berlin does not have Patriot missiles that it can simply hand over to a third party, such as Ukraine, and that Germany instead suggested strengthening Poland’s security by sending air defense systems to NATO’s eastern border.

The idea of sending the US-made missile systems directly to western Ukraine was previously floated by Polish Defense…