The Defence Committee of the Bulgarian National Assembly has accepted a proposal for Bulgaria to send to Ukraine defective anti-aircraft guided missiles for S-300 systems and 5.56×45 mm ammunition, which are no longer needed by the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. The decision was made at an extraordinary session of the Assembly.
Source: European Pravda; Novini.bg portal
Details: The proposal was adopted by 11 votes to 4. There were no abstainers.
During the meeting, an expert from the Ministry of Defence explained that these missiles have not been tested and that there is no way to repair them in Bulgaria.
The fault in the fact that this equipment cannot be serviced is rather political, Nikolai Drenchev from the Revival party said during the debate.
“It is very unfortunate that we will be left with even more degraded and unprotected skies. With a political decision, we are pushing our army in a suicidal direction. We would recommend finding ways to keep all our equipment in working order,” he added.
“In Bulgaria, we do not have the opportunity to repair missiles of this type, but Ukraine does. This is done in conditions that we do not have,” commented Defence Minister Todor Tagarev.
Providing Ukraine with defective missiles will in no way impair the capabilities of the Bulgarian army. Experts claim that it is impossible to repair them in Bulgaria, Tagarev stressed.
Hristo Gadev, the Chairman of the Commission on Defence from the GERB-SDS party, reported that the aid provided to Ukraine does not yet impair the combat capability of the Bulgarian army.
Earlier, the Bulgarian government approved a draft agreement between the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ukrainian Defence Ministry for the free provision of armoured transport equipment.
The parliamentary majority in Bulgaria approved the provision of about 100 Soviet-style armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine on 21 July. These APCs have been in the warehouse of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bulgaria since the 1980s.
Additional assistance may also be established in a separate intergovernmental agreement between Kyiv and Sofia.
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