Europeans should intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine - French expert
A Russian drone strike on Romanian territory confirms the need to quickly launch the European Sky Shield initiative to protect the airspace near Ukraine's borders.
French military expert Xavier Tytelman said this in a comment to Ukrinform.
"We have simply allowed them to go so far that they now feel they can do anything. So they say: 'Remove all your ambassadors, withdraw all your embassies, because we will bomb Kyiv more or less randomly, since we have the Oreshnik, which is poorly guided and may fall on your embassies'," the expert said.
He believes the response should be the deployment of Sky Shield – a European initiative involving the use of allied aviation and air defense systems to intercept Russian missiles and drones approaching NATO borders or striking civilians in Ukraine.
"At some point, we need to wake up. There is Sky Shield, it has been discussed for a long time. It is a European project under which dozens of generals support the operational deployment of a certain amount of equipment on Ukraine's borders. Our fighter jets take off in three minutes and intercept missiles heading toward our borders," Tytelman explained.
According to him, allies already act on a similar principle when protecting Gulf countries from Iranian attacks, without considering it a direct entry into war.
"If these missiles are not heading toward our borders, in any case in 95% of cases they hit civilians. So we have legitimacy to intercept them – just as we do when defending Abu Dhabi, Israel, and Gulf countries when Iran fires at them. We are not at war with Iran, but we allow ourselves to protect civilians who are being attacked," the expert said.
He added that the same approach should apply to Ukraine, especially after Russian strikes on energy and nuclear infrastructure.
"Since Russia began striking nuclear facilities, if a nuclear plant explodes in Ukraine, we are still very interested in being able to protect it, because it would affect us as well. In addition to the ability to intercept missiles as they approach the border, we protect Ukrainians and create a buffer zone where we can be sure that our airspace will no longer be violated the way it is now," Tytelman said.
He also noted that relevant European systems have already been tested and work well together with Ukrainian air defenses.
"We ensured technical data exchange between the Ukrainian air defense system and our fighter jets flying over Poland to confirm that it works. We prove that we can do it. We show that we are capable of intercepting. We show that there is no escalation when we intercept missiles over Ukrainian territory," the expert said.
Photo: Xavier Tytelman / Facebook