Norway has sent around 100 French-designed anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine at war with Russia, the Norwegian government announced this morning.
The donation, which has already been made, concerns Mistral launchers with around 100 missiles which have so far been on board Norwegian navy ships, the Ministry of Defense added in a press release.
At the end of March, during a speech by videoconference before the Norwegian Parliament, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, had asked Oslo for anti-aircraft missiles, but of a more modern type, the Nasams (acronym of norwegian advanced surface to air missile system – “Advanced Norwegian surface-to-air missile system”) produced by the Norwegian Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace.
“The missile [Mistral] should be withdrawn from service in the Norwegian army, but it remains a modern and effective weapon, which will be of great use for Ukraine”, Norwegian Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram said in the statement. Built since the end of the 1980s by the defense group Matra, which has since been merged into the European giant MBDA, the Mistral is a very short-range surface-to-air missile.
Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Norway has already supplied Ukraine with some 4,000 M72-type anti-tank weapons and other small military equipment.
