Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, said yesterday that his government had rejected Washington’s proposal that Bogota supply Ukraine with its Russian-made military equipment.
“In one of the conversations, General [Laura] Richardson and other representatives of the United States told me that given the impossibility [of Colombia] to keep [Russian weapons] in an active state, they would do it and send it to Ukraine,” declared the president.
According to him, so far, the Russian-made weapons that his country possesses are in poor condition, because Bogotá doesn’t have the resources for their technical maintenance.
“We are not on anyone’s side. We are for peace. Therefore, not one unit of Russian military equipment, regardless of the conditions it is in on our territory, will be used in that conflict,” Petro said.
Last week, the head of the Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, revealed that the United States is in talks with several Latin American countries with the goal of having them provide Ukraine with their Russian-made military equipment, in exchange for American weapons.
According to Richardson, a total of nine countries in the region have Russian weapons in their arsenals, and the Pentagon is “working to replace it with American equipment if those nations decide to donate it to kyiv.”
In this regard, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that Russia will “very closely” follow US attempts to persuade Latin American countries to transfer their weapons to Ukraine.
“Here it is very important [to take into account] the legal and juridical restrictions related to supplies to third nations,” Peskov declared, recalling that “any delivery is subject to certain obligations acquired by those countries that receive the military equipment” from Russia.
