Greece and Spain declined to send Ukraine air-defence missiles while Ireland was alone in calling out Israel, in the EU’s first defence brainstorm after a lethal summer in Ukraine and Gaza.

Russian airstrikes killed 400 Ukrainian civilians in July because Kyiv did not have enough interceptor missiles, but Greece and Spain declined to open their stockpiles at an EU defence ministers’ meeting in the Druids Glen golf club near Dublin on Tuesday (1 September).

“There were calls and talks about these missiles but there was, unfortunately, no concrete success today regarding this,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, without naming the two holdouts, the way some ministers, such as Dutch arms-procurement minister Derk Boswijk did earlier the same day.

“Patriot missiles about to expire [by Nato standards] should be sent to Ukraine,” said Kallas.

But Greek defence minister Nikos Dendias also told press in Ireland that Athens needed its anti-air capacity to deal with “revisionism in the Eastern Mediterranean”, alluding to Turkey.

Several ministers voiced alarm that Russia was using “increasingly kinetic hybrid attacks”, in Kallas’ words, on Nato and EU territory.

Russia was suspected of plotting a drone attack at Leipzig in Germany in August, in the latest example of ever-more violent sabotage plots inside Western Europe.

“What we’ve seen is that Russian [intelligence] services don’t have any limitations in their toolbox … even up to killing people, they don’t have any
limitations,” said Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur at the informal talks in Ireland on Tuesday.

Kallas said the next round of EU sanctions on Russia, expected in October, would blacklist hundreds more Russians, stop Western technology reaching president Vladimir Putin’s arms factories, and halt more shadow fleet oil tankers funding his war.

Turning to the Middle East, defence ministers discussed Austrian, Irish, Spanish, and European Commission proposals to send EU-flagged civilian and military peacekeepers to Lebanon, after a UN-mandated mission, Unifil, is forced out on 31 December due to Israeli and US pressure.