Cyprus might be handing over the Soviet-made weapons to Ukraine

The Republic of Cyprus is open to the U.S. request of transferring its Soviet-made military hardware to Ukraine.

Militarnyi informs about it.

The condition for the transfer of weapons is to receive the more modern systems instead, writes Forbes.

U.S. request for Cyprus to transfer its Soviet-made weapons to Ukraine was received positively by President Nicos Anastasiades.

The Armed Forces of Cyprus have the 9K330 Tor short-range and 9K37 Buk medium-range surface-to-air missile systems in their arsenal.

Cyprus operates a sizable fleet of over 50 T-80 acquired from Russia in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2010s.

The information provided by the publication states that Cyprus is interested in shipping its Russian systems over to Ukraine if it can get an appropriate replacement.

Additionally, Cyprus also considers that maintaining these Russian weapons would be even more costly and complicated over the next decade due to the extensive sanctions recently leveled against Russia, which will disrupt Moscow’s ability to provide parts and maintenance support to countries that operate Russian-built hardware.

Back in January, Cypriot media reported that the servicemen had basically made a decision on what new anti-aircraft systems they would want. This concerns the systems that could create “an air shield over the entire island and would be capable of countering any threat inside the Cyprus airspace.”

The requested systems might include the MIM-104 Patriot missiles, but there are doubts that the US would agree to transfer them.

Probably, more limited short to medium-range air defenses would be provided to replace the Buk and Tor systems.

Previously, Slovakia had officially confirmed the transfer of S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine.