German parliament deputy Roderich Kiesewetter, from the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that a coalition of Western countries could provide air defense within a strip up to 100 kilometers wide in western Ukraine. Earlier in May, Kiesewetter told FAZ that Western countries could use air defense systems across borders to shoot down Russian drones and missiles over Ukraine.
“Coalition of willing countries could extend the reach of their air defense to a strip of 70-100 kilometers in western Ukraine,” said Kiesewetter. “This would relieve the burden on the Ukrainian armed forces in this area – they could concentrate on air defense in the east of the country,” he added.
The Polish government is also considering the possibility of shooting down Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory near the Polish borders.
The spokesperson of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pawel Wronski, told Ukrinform, “This issue is being considered from legal and technical points of view, but there are no decisions in this matter,” adding that the Ukrainian side had approached Poland with such an initiative.
Wronski said the issue began to be considered after a Russian missile violated Polish airspace in March of this year.
The event took place on March 24. At that time, the missile entered Polish airspace at 4 hours 23 minutes, stayed there for 39 seconds, and then left. Military radars observed the missile throughout its flight.
Recently, Vladimir Zelensky gave an interview to Reuters in which he lamented that neighboring NATO countries do not shoot down Russian missiles heading towards targets in Ukraine. He asked, “Can they do it?” and then answered himself, “I’m sure they can.” He further asked, “Will this be an attack by NATO countries, their involvement? No.”
Previously, German Bundestag deputies and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen have expressed similar ideas. Nico Lange, an advisor to the Munich Security Conference, stated on the German television program Tagesschau that the defeat of Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace from NATO countries would be legal, as per Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Can the interception of Iranian missiles launched towards Israel, carried out by US forces and some of their allies, serve as an example of missile defense for Ukraine by third countries beyond its territory? From a legal point of view, it definitely cannot because, unlike Ukraine, Israel is bound to the US by a dense fabric of legally binding agreements on military assistance and military-technical cooperation. And in the scale of American preferences, Israel stands higher than Ukraine.
Last week, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated that there is no serious discussion in the West about shooting down Russian missiles and UAVs over Ukraine. In May, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said that Germany, as before, does not support the idea of introducing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
