On March 6, Russia fired a missile into the Ukrainian port of Odesa that exploded about 400 metres (1,300ft) from where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was preparing to tour the city with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“As we were getting into our cars, we heard a large explosion,” Mitsotakis later told reporters. “We were all concerned, especially if you consider that we were in an open space with no cover. It was quite savage.”
Many Western leaders have visited Zelenskyy, but this was the only occasion when there was a plausible threat to their life and safety. Analysts in Athens do not believe it was an accident.
“It was a message to Greece, a message to the Russophilic portion of Greek society,” said Konstantinos Filis, a professor of international relations who directs the Institute of Global Affairs at the American College of Greece.
According to Dianeosis, an Athens-based think tank, about 70 percent of Greeks had a favourable view of Russia before the full-blown war in Ukraine. That fell to 50 percent after the 2022 invasion and to 30 percent last year.
“The Russians are very annoyed with the Greeks,” Filis told Al Jazeera. “Greece has supported Ukraine very clearly from the beginning.”
Just three days after the war began, Greece announced it was sending Ukraine two C-130 planeloads of rifles, ammunition and grenades. Germany’s Bild newspaper revealed they included 20,000 Kalashnikov rifles Greece had confiscated in 2013 en route to Libya, which is under a United Nations arms embargo.
Greece’s early support for Ukraine caused the Russian embassy in Athens to call on “very senior politicians” to “come to their senses” and “stop anti-Russian propaganda”.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zacharova called Greece’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine “deeply mistaken” and “criminal”, warning that “in the end, the weapons will be turned on civilians, including the Greeks,” a reference to 150,000 ethnic Greek Ukrainians who then lived mainly in the besieged towns of Mariupol and Odesa.
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