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 entering into our automobiles, we heard a big explosion,” Mitsotakis later advised reporters. “We had been all involved, particularly when you think about that we had been in an open area with no cowl. It was fairly savage.”
Many Western leaders have visited Zelenskyy, however this was the one event when there was a believable risk to their life and security. Analysts in Athens don’t consider it was an accident.
“It was a message to Greece, a message to the Russophilic portion of Greek society,” mentioned Konstantinos Filis, a professor of worldwide relations who directs the Institute of World Affairs on the American Faculty of Greece.
That Russophilic inhabitants is dropping dramatically.
In line with Dianeosis, an Athens-based assume tank, about 70 p.c of Greeks had a beneficial view of Russia earlier than the full-blown battle in Ukraine. That fell to 50 p.c after the 2022 invasion and to 30 p.c 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 battle 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 below a United Nations arms embargo.
Greece’s early help for Ukraine precipitated the Russian embassy in Athens to name on “very senior politicians” to “come to their senses” and “cease anti-Russian propaganda”.
Russian Ministry of Overseas Affairs spokesperson Maria Zacharova known as Greece’s resolution to ship weapons to Ukraine “deeply mistaken” and “prison”, warning that “in the long run, the weapons might 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 equipped Ukraine with a further 20,000 155mm artillery shells, Stinger missiles and 40 Soviet-era BMP-1 armoured personnel carriers. It’s at present 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, particularly, 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 trade and economic system.
Ukraine can be reportedly within the electrical energy mills now mendacity unused in coal-fired energy stations Greece has decommissioned.
Greece can be the conduit for third-party battle 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 navy logistics pier on the Greek port since signing a 2019 defence cooperation settlement with Greece.
Army 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 navy site visitors, that makes Alexandroupolis one of many quickest conduits to Ukraine.
‘We may supply antiaircraft weapons and S-300 air defence techniques’
Russia has invoked its shared Orthodoxy with Greece and its help to the Greek Battle of Independence in opposition to the Ottoman Empire in 1821, however these cultural and historic affinities are trumped by Russian behaviour in direction of Ukraine, which Greece likens to behavior from its neighbour Turkey.
Mitsotakis articulated his authorities’s help for Ukraine in these phrases in Odesa.
“Greece … has confronted belligerence previously,” he mentioned. “Greece’s participation in European help for Ukraine wants no additional rationalization.”
Greece has been attempting to influence 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 shouldn’t be 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 direction of neighbours is enshrined within the UN Constitution, and Athens desires to see this utilized in Ukraine, analysts mentioned.
Unofficially, Greece has despatched Ukraine much more direct navy 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 navy transfers, providing Greece $200m in overseas navy financing in a letter to Mitsotakis in January.
“The federal government is attempting to supply issues that may be changed,” a diplomatic supply advised Al Jazeera. “In idea, we may supply 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 mentioned it has supplied to ship it to Ukraine if the US would substitute it with a Patriot missile battery.
Greece and Ukraine are at present negotiating a 10-year help settlement alongside the traces of these signed by many different NATO members.
“Greece desires an settlement … based mostly on navy price range surpluses – supplies it’s important to promote or destroy earlier than their use-by date,” the diplomatic supply mentioned. “We don’t need a separate Ukraine price range line.”
Public opinion divided
A current survey of 15 European nations by the European Council on Overseas Relations confirmed 55 p.c of Greeks oppose elevated defence spending for Ukraine, in keeping with most Europeans.
Nonetheless, in contrast to most Europeans, an identical variety of Greeks additionally opposes sending extra weapons to Ukraine.
Though Greece outspends most NATO nations on defence – it devoted 3.7 p.c of its gross home product to its navy 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 mentioned Ukraine may count on 60 decommissioned F-16s from Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Ukraine has mentioned it wants about 150. Greece’s 32 jets would go a way in direction of closing the hole.
In line with sources that spoke to Al Jazeera, Greece’s most well-liked components for transferring these jets is to promote them again to the US, which might improve them and cross them on to Kyiv.
Some navy consultants are squeamish about giving freely 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 drive engineer advised Al Jazeera on the situation of anonymity.
“The sale of 32 F-16s … would open an enormous gap within the air drive. … There must be a quorum of about 200 plane, which might’t occur with extra fashionable and costly fighter jets.”
