Athens, Greece – On March 6, Russia fired a missile into the Ukrainian port of Odesa that exploded about 400 metres (1,300ft) from where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was preparing to tour the city with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“As we were getting into our cars, we heard a large explosion,” Mitsotakis later told reporters. “We were all concerned, especially if you consider that we were in an open space with no cover. It was quite savage.”
Many Western leaders have visited Zelenskyy, but this was the only occasion when there was a plausible threat to their life and safety. Analysts in Athens do not believe it was an accident.
“It was a message to Greece, a message to the Russophilic portion of Greek society,” said Konstantinos Filis, a professor of international relations who directs the Institute of Global Affairs at the American College of Greece.
That Russophilic population is dropping dramatically.
According to Dianeosis, an Athens-based think tank, about 70 percent of Greeks had a favourable view of Russia before the full-blown war in Ukraine. That fell to 50 percent after the 2022 invasion and to 30 percent last year.
“The Russians are very annoyed with the Greeks,” Filis told Al Jazeera. “Greece has supported Ukraine very clearly from the beginning.”
Just three days after the war began, Greece announced it was sending Ukraine two C-130 planeloads of rifles, ammunition and grenades. Germany’s Bild newspaper revealed they included 20,000 Kalashnikov rifles Greece had confiscated in 2013 en route to Libya, which is under a United Nations arms embargo.
Greece’s early support for Ukraine caused the Russian embassy in Athens to call on “very senior politicians” to “come to their senses” and “stop anti-Russian propaganda”.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zacharova called Greece’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine “deeply mistaken” and “criminal”, warning that “in the end, the weapons will be turned on civilians, including the Greeks,” a reference to 150,000 ethnic Greek Ukrainians who then lived mainly in the besieged towns of Mariupol and Odesa.
Officially, Greece has supplied Ukraine with an additional 20,000 155mm artillery shells, Stinger missiles and 40 Soviet-era BMP-1 armoured personnel carriers. It is currently preparing to send four massive transformers that convert high-voltage DC current produced by power stations to the lower AC voltage used on local distribution grids that supply households.
Odesa, in particular, needs these because seven out of the nine transformers that ring the city have been knocked out by Russian strikes – part of the Kremlin’s aggressive strategy to shut down Ukraine’s defence industry and economy.
Ukraine is also reportedly interested in the electricity generators now lying unused in coal-fired power stations Greece has decommissioned.
Greece is also the conduit for third-party war materiel.
Its northern port of Alexandroupolis has a direct rail link with Odesa via Romania or via Lviv, Poland, and the United States has developed its own military logistics pier at the Greek port since signing a 2019 defence cooperation agreement with Greece.
Military equipment can reach Ukraine within 24 hours of offloading in Alexandroupolis. Now that Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait, the entrance to the Black Sea, is closed to all military traffic, that makes Alexandroupolis one of the quickest conduits to Ukraine.
‘We could offer antiaircraft guns and S-300 air defence systems’
Russia has invoked its shared Orthodoxy with Greece and its assistance to the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821, but these cultural and historical affinities are trumped by Russian behaviour towards Ukraine, which Greece likens to behaviour from its neighbour Turkey.
Mitsotakis articulated his government’s support for Ukraine in these terms in Odesa.
“Greece … has faced belligerence in the past,” he said. “Greece’s participation in European support for Ukraine needs no further explanation.”
Greece has been trying to persuade Turkey to agree on maritime boundaries in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean in accordance with the UN’s Law of the Sea, to which Turkey is not a signatory. Turkey disputes that Greece’s islands have a continental shelf and also disputes Greek sovereignty over its east Aegean islands.
Nonbelligerence towards neighbours is enshrined in the UN Charter, and Athens wants to see this applied in Ukraine, analysts said.
Unofficially, Greece has sent Ukraine even more direct military assistance, including self-propelled guns, with some officials putting the aid’s total value in the range of $300m over two years. That figure could rise sharply.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has encouraged more military transfers, offering Greece $200m in foreign military financing in a letter to Mitsotakis in January.
“The government is trying to offer things that can be replaced,” a diplomatic source told Al Jazeera. “In theory, we could offer antiaircraft guns and S-300 air defence systems.”
Greece owns one Russian-made S-300 long-range air defence battery, which is stationed on Crete, and government sources said it has offered to send it to Ukraine if the US would replace it with a Patriot missile battery.
Greece and Ukraine are currently negotiating a 10-year assistance agreement along the lines of those signed by many other NATO members.
“Greece wants an agreement … based on military budget surpluses – materials you have to sell or destroy before their use-by date,” the diplomatic source said. “We do not want a separate Ukraine budget line.”
Public opinion divided
A recent survey of 15 European countries by the European Council on Foreign Relations showed 55 percent of Greeks oppose increased defence spending for Ukraine, in line with most Europeans.
However, unlike most Europeans, a similar number of Greeks also opposes sending more weapons to Ukraine.
Although Greece outspends most NATO countries on defence – it dedicated 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product to its military last year – concern for its own security prevents it from being more generous.
Yet Ukraine is asking for more.
Greece is about to decommission 32 older F-16 Block-30 fighter jets as it upgrades 82 F-16s to Block-70 and acquires 24 fourth-generation Rafale fighters from France.
A US congressional committee has also cleared Greece to buy up to 40 fifth-generation F-35 multirole jets. Ukraine has made no secret of wanting them.
One report has said Ukraine could expect 60 decommissioned F-16s from Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Ukraine has said it needs about 150. Greece’s 32 jets would go some way towards closing the gap.
According to sources that spoke to Al Jazeera, Greece’s preferred formula for transferring those jets is to sell them back to the US, which would upgrade them and pass them on to Kyiv.
Some military experts are squeamish about giving away dozens of fighter jets, saying the security concerns that make Greek policy pro-Ukrainian also restrain it.
“Unfortunately, because of our neighbours, we are obliged to have very powerful armed forces,” an air force engineer told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.
“The sale of 32 F-16s … would open a big hole in the air force. … There has to be a quorum of about 200 aircraft, which can’t happen with more modern and expensive fighter jets.”
