The Polish government has expressed its willingness to accept the delivery of the Patriot air defense system offered by the German government, despite the fact that the two administrations had publicly disagreed on the location of the equipment.
The Polish Minister of Defense, Mariusz Blaszczak, explained on Twitter that he has accepted «with disappointment» the German reluctance to locate this system on Ukrainian territory. However, «we are starting to work on preparations to deploy the launchers in Poland and make them part of our command system,» he added.
German Minister Christine Lambrecht, who had proposed from the beginning that the missiles be located in Poland, had also indicated that the device should be considered as part of NATO’s defenses, which in principle would rule out its being placed under Polish command, as Blaszczak pointed out.
Berlin offered its help to defend Polish airspace after the impact of a missile near the Ukrainian border, in an incident that set off all the alarms as a potential aggression against a NATO member country.