Athens, Greece – On March 6, Russia fired a missile into the Ukrainian port of Odesa that exploded about 400 metres (1,300ft) from the place Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was making ready to tour town with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“As we had been moving into our vehicles, we heard a big explosion,” Mitsotakis later advised reporters. “We had been all involved, particularly if you happen to contemplate that we had been in an open house with no cowl. It was fairly savage.”
Many Western leaders have visited Zelenskyy, however this was the one event when there was a believable menace to their life and security. Analysts in Athens don’t imagine it was an accident.
“It was a message to Greece, a message to the Russophilic portion of Greek society,” stated Konstantinos Filis, a professor of worldwide relations who directs the Institute of International Affairs on the American Faculty of Greece.
That Russophilic inhabitants is dropping dramatically.
In accordance with Dianeosis, an Athens-based assume tank, about 70 % of Greeks had a beneficial view of Russia earlier than the full-blown conflict in Ukraine. That fell to 50 % after the 2022 invasion and to 30 % final yr.
“The Russians are very aggravated with the Greeks,” Filis advised Al Jazeera. “Greece has supported Ukraine very clearly from the start.”
Simply three days after the conflict started, Greece introduced it was sending Ukraine two C-130 planeloads of rifles, ammunition and grenades. Germany’s Bild newspaper revealed they included 20,000 Kalashnikov rifles Greece had confiscated in 2013 en path to Libya, which is underneath a United Nations arms embargo.
Greece’s early assist for Ukraine induced the Russian embassy in Athens to name on “very senior politicians” to “come to their senses” and “cease anti-Russian propaganda”.
Russian Ministry of International Affairs spokesperson Maria Zacharova known as Greece’s choice to ship weapons to Ukraine “deeply mistaken” and “legal”, warning that “in the long run, the weapons will probably be turned on civilians, together with the Greeks,” a reference to 150,000 ethnic Greek Ukrainians who then lived primarily within the besieged cities of Mariupol and Odesa.
Formally, Greece has provided Ukraine with a further 20,000 155mm artillery shells, Stinger missiles and 40 Soviet-era BMP-1 armoured personnel carriers. It’s at the moment making ready to ship 4 large transformers that convert high-voltage DC present produced by energy stations to the decrease AC voltage used on native distribution grids that offer households.
Odesa, specifically, wants these as a result of seven out of the 9 transformers that ring town have been knocked out by Russian strikes – a part of the Kremlin’s aggressive technique to shut down Ukraine’s defence business and economic system.
Ukraine can also be reportedly within the electrical energy mills now mendacity unused in coal-fired energy stations Greece has decommissioned.
Greece can also be the conduit for third-party conflict materiel.
Its northern port of Alexandroupolis has a direct rail hyperlink with Odesa by way of Romania or by way of Lviv, Poland, and america has developed its personal army logistics pier on the Greek port since signing a 2019 defence cooperation settlement with Greece.
Navy gear can attain Ukraine inside 24 hours of offloading in Alexandroupolis. Now that Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait, the doorway to the Black Sea, is closed to all army site visitors, that makes Alexandroupolis one of many quickest conduits to Ukraine.
‘We may provide antiaircraft weapons and S-300 air defence techniques’
Russia has invoked its shared Orthodoxy with Greece and its help to the Greek Conflict of Independence towards the Ottoman Empire in 1821, however these cultural and historic affinities are trumped by Russian behaviour in the direction of Ukraine, which Greece likens to behavior from its neighbour Turkey.
Mitsotakis articulated his authorities’s assist for Ukraine in these phrases in Odesa.
“Greece … has confronted belligerence previously,” he stated. “Greece’s participation in European assist for Ukraine wants no additional clarification.”
Greece has been making an attempt to steer Turkey to agree on maritime boundaries within the Aegean and Jap Mediterranean in accordance with the UN’s Legislation of the Sea, to which Turkey isn’t a signatory. Turkey disputes that Greece’s islands have a continental shelf and in addition disputes Greek sovereignty over its east Aegean islands.
Nonbelligerence in the direction of neighbours is enshrined within the UN Constitution, and Athens desires to see this utilized in Ukraine, analysts stated.
Unofficially, Greece has despatched Ukraine much more direct army help, together with self-propelled weapons, with some officers placing the help’s whole worth within the vary of $300m over two years. That determine may rise sharply.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has inspired extra army transfers, providing Greece $200m in overseas army financing in a letter to Mitsotakis in January.
“The federal government is making an attempt to supply issues that may be changed,” a diplomatic supply advised Al Jazeera. “In concept, we may provide antiaircraft weapons and S-300 air defence techniques.”
Greece owns one Russian-made S-300 long-range air defence battery, which is stationed on Crete, and authorities sources stated it has supplied to ship it to Ukraine if the US would substitute it with a Patriot missile battery.
Greece and Ukraine are at the moment negotiating a 10-year help settlement alongside the traces of these signed by many different NATO members.
“Greece desires an settlement … based mostly on army funds surpluses – supplies you need to promote or destroy earlier than their use-by date,” the diplomatic supply stated. “We don’t need a separate Ukraine funds line.”
Public opinion divided
A latest survey of 15 European nations by the European Council on International Relations confirmed 55 % of Greeks oppose elevated defence spending for Ukraine, according to most Europeans.
Nevertheless, not like most Europeans, an analogous variety of Greeks additionally opposes sending extra weapons to Ukraine.
Though Greece outspends most NATO nations on defence – it devoted 3.7 % of its gross home product to its army final yr – concern for its personal safety prevents it from being extra beneficiant.
But Ukraine is asking for extra.
Greece is about to decommission 32 older F-16 Block-30 fighter jets because it upgrades 82 F-16s to Block-70 and acquires 24 fourth-generation Rafale fighters from France.
A US congressional committee has additionally cleared Greece to purchase as much as 40 fifth-generation F-35 multirole jets. Ukraine has made no secret of wanting them.
One report has stated Ukraine may count on 60 decommissioned F-16s from Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Ukraine has stated it wants about 150. Greece’s 32 jets would go a way in the direction of closing the hole.
In accordance with sources that spoke to Al Jazeera, Greece’s most popular components for transferring these jets is to promote them again to the US, which might improve them and go them on to Kyiv.
Some army specialists are squeamish about freely giving dozens of fighter jets, saying the safety considerations that make Greek coverage pro-Ukrainian additionally restrain it.
“Sadly, due to our neighbours, we’re obliged to have very highly effective armed forces,” an air power engineer advised Al Jazeera on the situation of anonymity.
“The sale of 32 F-16s … would open a giant gap within the air power. … There needs to be a quorum of about 200 plane, which may’t occur with extra fashionable and costly fighter jets.”