Poland will sell arms to Ukraine in one of the country’s biggest defence export contracts of the last 30 years, the prime minister announced on Tuesday.
Speaking during a visit to the Huta Stalowa Wola armaments factory in south-eastern Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki described the facility as “one of the pearls in the crown of the defence industry,” although he added that there still remained “much to be done.”
“But I’m very glad that we have the opportunity today to sell our weapons abroad,” he continued. “Right now, we’re signing one of the biggest, if not the biggest, arms export contracts of the last 30 years.”
Morawiecki explained that the contract concerned the sale of arms to Ukraine and that the Polish-made weapons would be “very important” in the battlefields of eastern Ukraine.
The prime minister went on to say Ukraine would receive some of the funds for the purchase from the EU and would pay the rest from its budget. “Poland will get this money to enhance our production potential here,” Morawiecki said of the Huta Stalowa Wola plant, part of the PGZ arms group.
A deal for more than 50 Krab howitzers worth about PLN 3 billion (EUR 650,000) was signed in Kyiv.
Morawiecki said the first 18 units had already been sent to Ukraine and that Polish and Ukrainian government officials had announced the purchase of a further 56 units the previous day.
The delivery of all the units will be completed in anything from several months to over a year, as is normal for such contracts, the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reported.