2023-05-13 14:41:56
He Ministry of Defense of Germany announced this Saturday the delivery to Ukraine of a new military aid package valued at 2.7 billion euros, the largest since the beginning of the invasion of russia.
The aid consignment includes 30 Leopard 1 tanks, 15 Gepard autonomous anti-aircraft armored vehicles, four IRIS-T-SLM air defense systems, 20 Marder armored vehicles, 200 reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles; a hundred light APC vehicles, another hundred logistic support vehicles and ammunition, according to what ‘Der Spiegel’ has said in recent hours.
The new package nearly doubles the total arms aid delivered by Germany to Ukraine since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the ministry. The German government had previously approved arms deliveries worth 2.75 billion euros.
The German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, has celebrated that “with this valuable contribution of military material that urgently neededwe are showing once again that Germany takes your support seriously.”
“Unfortunately, the end of the war is not in sight. Therefore, Germany will provide all the help it can, as long as it is needed,” he added.
According to the report, this aid consignment has been conceived as a symbol of German solidarity with Ukraine in parallel to the delivery of the Aachen Charlemagne Prize to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskywho could visit Germany this Sunday to attend the ceremony.
In one of kyiv’s first reactions to the announcement, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dimitro Kuleba has called for this aid to reach the country as soon as possible.
“Ukraine always needs everything as fast as possible”declared the minister in the framework of the second day of the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Stockholm (Sweden), where he is a guest.
Borrell asks for more ammunition
The top diplomatic officer of the EU, Joseph Borrell, He applauded this new consignment and recalled that Ukraine right now needs ammunition to progress in the war with Russia: “It is clear that we have to speed up the aid,” he assured this Saturday in relation to the meeting with Kuleba.
“He gave me just one figure: in the Bakhmut area, where the fighting continues, Ukraine needs around 1,000 artillery shells per day, to get an idea of the intensity of the fighting and the firepower of Russia and how the Ukrainians can resist this continuous and systematic bombardment”, he explained.
On the German aid package, Borrell has held some “very good news“, in particular after learning about the shipment of long-range projectiles, and has encouraged other countries to “do the same”.
“We have to talk here about specific capabilities, about the range of the ammunition, because the Russians are bombing from afar, so the Ukrainians must have the ability to reach the same distance. Not any type of ammunition will help them,” Borrell explained. .
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