Finland has agreed to donate AK-47 ammunition and assault rifles to Ukraine, and South Korea is supplying bulletproof vests, helmets and medical equipment.
Other countries such as Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Mexico, Colombia and Peru have so far refused to give Ukraine offensive weapons, despite visits and pressure from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, The New York Times reported in an article on Wednesday.
But one promising source of post-Soviet weapons is Cyprus, which has rocket launchers, helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles, as well as Tor and Buk missile systems capable of shooting down Russian aircraft, drones and missiles, according to the newspaper.
To facilitate the transfer of precious post-Soviet reserves to Kyiv, Washington has lifted an embargo on arms sales to Cyprus that was introduced 35 years ago.
The restrictions were meant to reduce the risk of escalating conflict on an island divided between a Greek-backed government and a Turkish-controlled region. But the result was that the Cypriot government started to source weapons from the Soviet Union, The New York Times said.
Lifting the embargo will allow Cyprus to buy Western weapons to replace its post-Soviet reserves, which in turn can be shipped to Ukraine.
A representative of the US administration told The New York Times that Cyprus is already considered a “potential option” in plans to supply weapons to Kyiv.
Cyprus “would be ready to consider” transferring some of its military stockpiles to Ukraine if they were “replaced with other military apparatus of equal power and capabilities,” Cypriot government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said in a statement sent to the newspaper.
According to the daily, Pelekanos quoted numerous meetings with American officials in recent months during which they “discussed this possibility.”
The plan to hand over post-Soviet weapons to Ukraine was put forward in July by the Washington-based think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which identified 23 non-NATO countries that are critical of Russian aggression against Ukraine and have reserves of Soviet or Russian weapons, The New York Times reported.
Thursday is day 232 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(jh/gs)
Source: The New York Times
