Patriot batteries in Rzeszow are subject to US commanders' decisions - Polish politician

He expressed this opinion in an interview with Antin Borkovskyi, host of the Studio West program.

"As for the use of Polish air defence systems to cover the western cities of Ukraine, I have been thinking about this for a long time and I am a supporter of this decision. Because a missile flying towards Lviv is not known to land in Poland. Therefore, we must defend ourselves here and, of course, defend Ukraine whenever possible.But this is also an issue for some interstate defence agreements and so on, because we cannot just shoot over Ukraine. Of course, there is no such agreement now. One country cannot fire without permission, without an agreement, over another country, even to defend it," the politician said.

According to him, the Patriot systems that are already located near the Ukrainian border in the vicinity of Rzeszow are American Patriot systems, so the Americans, American commanders decide whether to shoot or not.

"As for such a possible Polish-Ukrainian-American agreement, the Americans will not agree to it, because they do not agree to long-range strikes on Russian territory. Now we have made very good progress in terms of being able to attack Russian territory within at least 100 kilometres across the border. Otherwise, the Russians would shell Kharkiv without any losses for themselves, destroying the city from across the border. And this is the American response. But the Patriot batteries in Rzeszow are subject to the decisions of American commanders. The American leadership decides whether to fire and where to fire. We don't have that option. Poland has fewer Patriots than Ukraine at the moment," Bogdan Borusewicz summed up.

• On June 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says that there are discussions about shooting down missiles over the territory of another country, but questions arise, so no decision has been made yet.
• On June 22, Bohdan Klich, former Minister of Defence of the Republic of Poland and Chairman of the Senate Commission on European Union Affairs, said that Poland has only two Patriot batteries, but the Americans stationed on Polish territory have several such batteries.
• On July 5, US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said that during the upcoming NATO summit in Washington, the allies would raise the issue of strengthening Ukraine's air defence and the country's integration into the Alliance.