WSF: Egypt resists US calls to arm Ukraine

After Egypt agreed it wouldn’t send weapons to Russia, it is now resisting requests from senior US leaders to send them to Ukraine, Egyptian and American officials say, posing an obstacle for the Biden administration’s push to generate arms for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Report informs, citing The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Egypt initially planned to send rockets to Russia but dropped that plan under pressure from the US earlier this year, the officials say. US officials, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, asked Egypt to supply weapons to Ukraine instead, seeking to help the Ukrainian government overcome a shortage of ammunition.

According to WSJ, Austin made the request in March when the secretary of defense met Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, in Cairo. Egypt’s leaders were noncommittal at the time, and senior US officials have raised the request in multiple encounters since then, the officials said.

The US asked Egypt to supply artillery shells, antitank missiles, air-defense systems and small arms for Ukraine, according to a US official. In conversations with US officials, Egypt hasn’t definitively rejected the requests, but Egyptian officials said privately that Egypt has no plans to send the weapons.

A senior State Department official said Egypt was acting as a partner working toward a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. “We find these conversations with Egypt productive. On a range of diplomatic discussions, Egypt’s response has been befitting of a strong US partner,” the official said.

WSJ noted that Egypt has attempted not to take sides since Russia invaded Ukraine, maintaining friendly ties with the Russian government. Sisi has a warm personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and attended a summit of African leaders in St. Petersburg in July. Egypt also buys the majority of its wheat from Russia, and Moscow is looking to increase those sales after it backed out of an agreement last month that had allowed Ukraine to export grain via the Black Sea.

The Egyptian government’s failure to deliver the weapons so far has raised concerns among members of Congress who are pressuring the Biden administration not to release $320 million in military aid in order to maintain pressure on the government over its human-rights abuses. The US provides Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year, with a small portion conditioned on the country’s human-rights record.