ATHENS — Greece, at the request of the Ukrainian government and in coordination with its partners in NATO, is today dispatching armaments including Kalashnikov rifles and anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

The weapons are being sent aboard two Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport planes along with an unspecified amount of medical equipment and humanitarian aid. The pair of American-made tactical airlifters will land in Poland first en route to Ukraine.

The move follows Germany’s announcement that it will now send weapons to the embattled country and comes as mounting Greek casualties in Ukraine have both alarmed Athens and drawn swift condemnation across virtually all political lines in the Greek capital.

Russian airstrikes overnight in Mariupol killed 10 ethnic Greeks living in the strategic eastern Ukrainian city. Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, took to social media to thunder: “Stop the bombing now!”

The opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, said: “The Russian invasion needs to stop immediately. We need to return to the path of diplomacy.”

The deaths announced Sunday come on the heels of six fatalities among Ukraine’s sizeable Greek community on Saturday, including two in Sartana, on the outskirts of Mariupol, and four in the village of Buhas in the Donetsk region.

Earlier this month but prior to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor the Greek foreign minister, Nikos Dendias, urged his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to safeguard the Greek community in Ukraine. There are at least 90,000 ethnic Greeks in living in Ukraine, mainly in Mariupol and the wider Donetsk Oblast.

The decision to bolster Ukraine’s defenses with weapons shipments marks a step up to action from apathy for a key member of NATO that despite its relative proximity to Ukraine has largely observed the rapidly unfolding events from the rafters. One of Greece’s rising politicians, Nikos Androulakis of the center-left Movement for Change coalition, has slammed two top European Union leaders, Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell, as being “not up to the job.”

In his meeting with his chief of staff, Konstantinos Floros, and the defense minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, on Sunday, Mr. Mitsotakis announced that the decision to send the planes to Ukraine was also made in consultation with the European Union. 

According to Greek media reports, Greece’s deputy minister of national defense, Nikos Hardalias, may make the journey with the two cargo planes to Poland. Also on Sunday, Greece summoned the Russian ambassador in Athens, Andrey Maslov, for a meeting at the Greek foreign ministry.

Earlier in the week the KKE, the Greek Communist Party, organized anti-war demonstrations outside both the Russian and American embassies in Athens.