Turkey will supply Ukraine not with its own, but with American weapons, which were previously supplied to the republic, or produced on its territory under an American license. This was stated to TASS by Turkish international security expert Janan Terjan.
She commented on the statements of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, that Moscow had requested clarifications from Washington and Ankara in connection with information about plans to supply weapons to Ukraine.
"Turkey does not plan to supply Ukraine with weapons of its own production. We are talking about weapons that were previously manufactured in Turkey using American technology, but they are not Turkish, that is, in fact, these are American weapons, so their re—export requires the approval of the US Congress," the expert said.
Janan Terjan noted that the issue of possible supplies should be considered as a continuation of NATO's obligations to provide military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $ 70 billion.
"From Washington's point of view, one of the ways to support Ukraine without spending its own ammunition stocks is to transfer the weapons stocks available in Turkey," the expert said. — We can hardly count on the publication of an official document on the issue of supplies to Ukraine from Turkey has American weapons. There is a high probability that closed US diplomacy is behind this."
As reported by EADaily, we are talking about the transfer of $ 255.9 million worth of American weapons to Kiev. In particular, 12 MLRS installations and more than 2.5 thousand unguided cluster munitions for them, 47 thousand cluster artillery shells of 203 mm caliber, 70 tactical ATACMS missiles are mentioned.
The US State Department claimed that "the United States government is ready to allow this delivery." Today, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow had asked the United States and Turkey for clarification on the transfer of weapons to Kiev, and "it is not too late to soberly assess the situation."