Berlin will provide more military support to Ukraine, but this will be restricted to the same kind of weapons that have already been delivered so far, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, chief government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit announced that Germany had promised additional weapons to Ukraine.
However, there are no “qualitative changes” to what types of weapons Berlin will deliver, he added. Instead, the new shipments should be “along the lines of what Germany already delivered since the beginning of the war.”
The Berlin government is therefore sticking to its line of not providing tanks, despite Kyiv’s calls. But there are signs that the governing coalition would like to go further in the future.
“We have an almost unanimous decision from our party congress saying that we could imagine doing more,” Green party chief Omid Nouripour said on Monday when asked by reporters about Hebestreit’s announcement.
“The fact that we [within the coalition] have different views from time to time is well known,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal called for the delivery of Patriot air defence systems and other high-tech air defence solutions to the country after the most recent Russian air strikes.
Germany is currently preparing to deploy patriot systems in neighbouring Poland after a stray missile killed two persons near the Ukrainian border last month.
Poland had originally suggested it would renounce the support in order for the systems to be stationed in Ukraine, but Germany rejected this.
(Julia Dahm | EURACTIV.de)
Source: euractiv.com
