Asked if Ukraine would send troops to defend NATO, Zelenskyy offered something else: know-how to stop drones now reaching its neighbors
Ukraine, the country under daily Russian attack, is offering to help defend others from it. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine will share its drone-defense experience with partners facing Russia's hybrid and drone attacks, NATO members and non-members alike, through its "Drone Deal" agreements, according to UNIAN.
Russia's hybrid and drone attacks are spreading past Ukraine, to Moldova, Germany, and Romania, and Kyiv is casting itself as the country that knows how to counter them.
Asked whether he would send Ukrainian troops to defend NATO members, Zelenskyy instead pointed to the drone agreements, bilateral pacts open to partners in or out of NATO, that pair weapons sales and joint production with the transfer of Ukraine's combat experience.
Ukraine had signed such deals with nine countries by early August and is negotiating more than a dozen others, becoming, as its officials put it, "a security provider for Europe."
The attacks spread past NATO
"Russia will continue hybrid attacks against various countries, and not only NATO members," Zelenskyy said, pointing to drone incursions over Moldova, which belongs to neither NATO nor the EU.
Those crossings have become routine: Moldova logged 39 Russian drone incursions in the first eight months of the year, and on 24 September, drones entered both Moldova and Romania as Poland scrambled fighters. Ukraine has offered help, Zelenskyy said, "above all to those countries that help us during the war."
The Drone Deal shares experience
The Drone Deal agreements cover the sale of drones and missiles and joint production, he added, "but also an exchange of experience."
He offered a precedent: "How we sent our specialists to the Middle East, how we helped protect critical infrastructure." Sharing how to defend against drones, he said, is "precisely part of this exchange."
Ukraine turns security provider
Zelenskyy did not answer the question on whether Ukraine would put troops into NATO countries under attack, steering instead to what Ukraine can already give, its hard-won experience of fighting the very weapons now reaching its neighbors' skies.
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