“Will Turkey Supply Ukraine S-400s And Get Back In U.S.’ Good Graces?” is the headline in a FORBES article, which draws on Reuters and NYT reports. Translations of Western press sources report on US-Turkey relations also appeared in Turkish press. Ankara is yet to officially comment on the request, but it is a clever litmus test by the White House to test how sincere Erdogan is in supporting the Ukrainian cause.
FORBES article states
In recent weeks several proposals have been made to arm Ukraine with Russian-built military hardware from the arsenals of NATO member states. There was Poland’s widely-reported offer of its fleet of Soviet-built MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets, which the United States declined, and Slovakia’s more recent offer to supply its arsenal of S-300 air defense missiles. Since its military still needs them, Greece has said it will not send any of its Russian-built Tor-M1 or 9K33 Osa missiles. On the other hand, it’s unclear if Athens would be willing to transfer the S-300s it has stored on the island of Crete if Kyiv requests them.
Now, American officials are proposing that NATO member Turkey could potentially arm Ukraine with the much more sophisticated Russian-built S-400 missiles it took delivery of in 2019.
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“It is the very system, made by Russia, that American officials punished Turkey — a NATO ally — for buying from Moscow several years ago,” the New York Times noted. “Now American diplomats see a way to pull Turkey away from its dance with Russia — and give the Ukrainians one of the most powerful, long-range antiaircraft systems in existence.”
Russian S-400 hardware deployment starts
Russian Ilyushin Il-76, carrying the first batch of equipment of S-400 missile defense system, … [+] GETTY IMAGES
Washington was deeply irked when fellow NATO member Turkey took delivery of these Russian missile systems back in 2019. It immediately suspended Ankara from the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and later slapped sanctions on its Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB). Washington has repeatedly affirmed it won’t reverse any of these decisions until Ankara completely removes all S-400s and their components from Turkish soil.
If Turkey were to take this opportunity to transfer its S-400s to Ukraine, it would simultaneously provide Kyiv with an air defense system that is much more advanced and capable than any it ever fielded and eliminate Washington’s justifications for sanctions and the F-35 ban. If it could not immediately order F-35s after doing so, Ankara could, at the very least, probably acquire the 40 advanced Block 70 F-16s and 80 modernization kits it requested last October, which could keep its huge F-16 fleet operational and up-to-date for the next decade at least.
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Furthermore, the U.S. could offer Patriot PAC-3 air defense missiles if Turkey gets rid of S-400, which, it’s worth remembering, Ankara has not yet put in service almost three years after taking acquiring them. The U.S. previously offered Turkey Patriot missiles if it agreed to ditch the S-400.
Transferring such arguably ‘game-changing’ Russian-built missiles to Ukraine would undoubtedly not go unnoticed in Moscow.
Russia was already infuriated by Turkey’s sale of armed Bayraktar TB2 drones, which are still carrying out combat operations against Russian ground forces almost a month into this war, to Ukraine before the present war began. Ukraine first used them in combat to destroy an artillery gun in a target strike in the Donbas region late last October. After Russia protested against that incident, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu insisted that when a country buys Turkey’s drones, they are “no longer a Turkish product” and, thus, Turkey cannot be blamed or held responsible for how or where they are used.
Perhaps there is a way that Turkey could offload the S-400, wash its hands of the political debacle around it, and have the missiles passed on to Ukraine without incurring the full wrath of Moscow. Rather than supplying the S-400s to Ukraine directly (which would be, in and of itself, a very difficult feat), Turkey could instead sell them to the United States (a U.S. senator proposed an amendment to buy them back in June 2020) or any other NATO member state up to the challenge of transferring them to the embattled Eastern European country. That way, it could counter Moscow’s inevitable protestations by, not unlike Cavusoglu did with the sale of TB2s, invoking the technicality that it wasn’t Turkey that directly armed Ukraine with the sophisticated system.
While this probably won’t happen, it still, nevertheless, cannot be completely ruled out, especially in light of the numerous unprecedented world-altering events that have taken place since Feb. 24.
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