Greece’s President, Defense Minister to visit Kyiv, hand over BMP-103 IFVs

The President of Greece, Kateryna Sakellaropoulou, and the Minister of National Defense, Nikos Panaiotopoulos, will visit Kyiv, where they will hand over BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine’s forces.

This is reported by Ukrinform with reference to ieidiseis.gr.

Also, Greece plans to provide the Ukrainian side with additional 155 mm munitions.

"On Thursday, the President of Greece will travel by train to Kyiv via Poland, accompanied by the Minister of Defense and the head of her office," the statement reads.

It should be recalled that in September, the Greek Ministry of Defense announced that the country’s defense chief Nikolaos Panaiotopoulos and his German counterpart Christine Lambrecht, in order to support Ukraine’s defenses against the ongoing Russian aggression, approved that Greece would transfer 40 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine.

In exchange, Greece will receive the same number of MARDER IFVs from Germany.

In June, Greece announced that it would transfer the BMP-1s to Ukraine only once it has received the Marders. DW wrote that the reason for this position is the country's conflict with Turkey, which allegedly encroaches on some Greek islands located in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea. With this in mind, the armed forces of Greece were put on alert.

Ambassador of Germany to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen said that the Marder IFVs had been mothballed for years and therefore required repair.