Lavrov: We will not allow any qualitative weapons to be supplied to Ukraine

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that his country will not allow the transfer of the S-300 missile defense system to Ukraine.

"The transfer of Soviet S-300 missiles from other countries to Ukraine is impossible and illegal, and Moscow will not allow this," Lavrov said in an interview with Russian television.

"The shipments of Western weapons to the territory of Ukraine will become a legitimate target of the Russian special operation there," he added.

Slovakia had said it was ready to supply Ukraine with Russian-made S-300 air defense systems, but only on the condition of obtaining an alternative to avoid undermining NATO security.

The S-300 surface-to-air missiles are an effective system for protecting strategic sites from aerial bombardment.

A Pentagon official told "Sky News Arabia", earlier, that the US Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, would discuss in Slovakia the possibility of providing Kyiv with this type of missile.

Slovakia is one of the few countries in NATO that owns this Russian weapon, which entered service for the first time in 1978.

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