Poland may have secretly transferred a series of Patriot missiles to Ukraine

“It turns out that the government in March provided Ukraine with expensive, very difficult to buy interceptor missiles for the Patriot complex without notifying the House of Representatives,” Deputy Speaker of the Polish House of Representatives Krzysztof Bosak said on July 4, while quoting a post from an account on social network X.

He said this was “very worrying information”, emphasizing that Poland urgently needs Patriot missiles to equip its air defense network. Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives Bosak emphasized that the Patriot complex is the “only weapon” that can shoot down the Iskander missiles that Russia deploys in the overseas territory of Kaliningrad bordering Poland.

“We must pass a law prohibiting the transfer of Polish weapons abroad without parliamentary approval,” he said.

Former defense minister Mariusz Blaszczak, a member of the opposition Law and Justice party, said that information about Poland transferring Patriot missiles to Ukraine was “an act that completely contradicts the government’s basic obligation, which is to ensure the safety of citizens.”

He asked Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government to speak up about the above information, as well as answer whether this would affect Poland’s position on the waiting list to receive Patriot missiles from the US.

The Polish and Ukrainian governments have not yet commented on the information.

Ukrainian Patriot systems are equipped with the most modern PAC-3 MSE missiles produced by the US, with a maximum range of 120 km for aircraft and 60 km for ballistic missiles. Ukraine has repeatedly praised the effectiveness of the Patriot, emphasizing that this is the only weapon that can deal with Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missile and Iskander-M tactical ballistics.

However, Patriot’s interception rate in Ukraine is increasingly declining due to missile exhaustion, while many batteries are also raided and destroyed by Russia. Moscow also continuously upgrades its Iskander-M ballistic missiles, making the Patriot system not as effective as Kiev wishes.

Colonel Yuri Ignat, press secretary of the Ukrainian Air Force Command, admitted in May that the country has a serious shortage of “air defense missiles in general”. The image he shared with Ukrainian media shows a Patriot platform in combat readiness with only 2 shells, while the remaining 6 launch tubes are empty.

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“The reserve of PAC-2/3 missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot complexes is running out. No more shipments have been delivered in more than a month. They most likely only have enough Patriot missiles to deal with another large-scale attack using the enemy’s ballistic missiles,” this account commented.

Poland was one of the countries that supported Ukraine most strongly after the conflict broke out. However, bilateral relations have deteriorated in recent weeks, after President Volodymyr Zelensky changed the name of a Ukrainian military unit to “UPA Heroes”.

UPA is the name of the nationalist insurgent group during World War II. This force fought against both Nazi Germany and Soviet forces and Polish units in the area.

The UPA was accused of participating in the Volhynia massacres of 1943-1945. Warsaw claims that about 100,000 Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalist forces during this period.

Poland this week announced that it would not transfer MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, as well as warned that Kiev would face obstacles in its efforts to join the European Union (EU) if it continued to honor nationalists accused of being involved in crimes against the Polish people.