Ukraine asks Poland to shoot down Russian missiles in its airspace, ruling out war

Aug. 29 () –

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has urged Poland to shoot down missiles flying over its airspace, ruling out the possibility of joining the conflict. “You don’t go to war by shooting down a missile flying in your direction,” he said.

“The argument that this will lead some of them to war is not valid. You don’t go to war by shooting down a missile or a drone that is flying in your direction and can cause damage to your own territory,” Kuleba said in an interview with the European edition of the American newspaper ‘Politico’.

Kuleba revealed that one of the issues raised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the recent NATO summit in Washington was the possibility of kyiv’s neighbours shooting down Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace.

“It’s time to make a decision. We have recently seen how bad Russian missile and drone attacks have been,” Kuleba said, referring to Moscow’s latest large-scale offensive against Ukraine’s energy industry.

Kuleba, who will attend a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday, said he would use the meeting to persuade his partners of Ukraine’s need to be able to use some long-range weapons against targets deep inside Russian territory.

“The European Union is a fundamentally important pillar in the coalition supporting Ukraine and can and should play a role in persuading the United States to take this decision,” he said.

“The moment we can fire, the moment we have enough missiles and we can use them, then it will work. But for now, we are still in the process of talking, of negotiating,” he said.