There is no concrete proposal or any consultations for transporting weapons from Cyprus to Ukraine, Government Spokesman, Marios Pelekanos, told CNA on Thursday.
Pelekanos was asked to respond to statements he made to the New York Times regarding the possibility of Cyprus sending weapons to Ukraine. He had said that Cyprus “would be ready to consider” the transfer of some of the weapons and its ammunition to Ukraine if “replaced with another military apparatus of equal power and capabilities.”
However, on Thursday, the Spokesman told CNA: “No concrete consultations have taken place on this issue. It was put forward during discussions and certain meetings either with EU partners or with the US and our answer has been that the Republic of Cyprus cannot provide any weapons, because we are a country under occupation, we are a country that has to secure its defence capacity, and if we proceeded with such a move we would have degraded our deterrent capabilities,” Pelekanos said.
He also noted that the possibility of sending weapons to Ukraine could only be taken into consideration as long as the current weapons the Cypriot military uses are replaced “with equivalent or better ones.”
“But there is no concrete proposal, there are no consultations, there was no proposal that we are considering,” Pelekanos added.
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