Ukraine on Saturday blasted the “global indecision” of its allies after Germany stalled on supplying its vaunted Leopard tanks to bolster Kyiv’s fighting capacity in the nearly year-long war with Russia.
On Friday, about 50 nations agreed to provide Kyiv with billions of US dollars of military hardware, including armored vehicles and munitions needed to push back Russian forces.
However, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said that despite heightened expectations, “we still cannot say when a decision will be taken, and what the decision will be, when it comes to the Leopard tank.”
Photo: AFP
“Today’s indecision is killing more of our people,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
“Every day of delay is the death of Ukrainians. Think faster,” he said.
In a joint statement on Saturday, the foreign ministers of the three Baltic states urged Germany “to provide Leopard tanks to Ukraine now.”
“This is needed to stop Russian aggression, help Ukraine and restore peace in Europe quickly,” said a message posted by Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkevics, and his Estonian and Lithuanian counterparts.
“Germany, as the leading European power, has special responsibility in this regard,” they added.
In Berlin, hundreds of people demonstrated outside the Federal Chancellery building calling for Germany to send tanks to Ukraine.
Berlin has been hesitant to send the Leopards or allow other nations to transfer them to Kyiv.
Reports earlier in the week indicated Germany would agree to do so only if the US provided its tanks as well.
Washington has said providing its Abrams tanks to Ukraine is not feasible, citing difficulties in training and maintenance.
However, expectations had grown ahead of Friday’s Ukraine Contact Group meeting of about 50 US-led countries that Germany would at least agree to let other countries operating Leopards transfer them to Kyiv’s army.
The pleas came as the Russian army said its troops had launched an offensive in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where fighting intensified this week after several months of an almost frozen front.
In its daily report on Saturday, Moscow’s forces said they had carried out “offensive operations” in the region and claimed to have “taken more advantageous lines and positions.”
Russia also said it had held a training exercise on repelling air attacks in the Moscow region, using an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported 26 airstrikes and 15 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems.
“The enemy does not abandon its aggressive plans, focusing its main efforts on attempts to fully occupy the Donetsk region” on Ukraine’s border with Russia, it said.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended the funeral of his interior minister and other officials killed in a helicopter crash outside the capital on Wednesday.
The seven coffins were hoisted into the echoing hall in central Kyiv by military pallbearers in full ceremonial dress, to the sound of a lone trumpet and a snare drum.
Denys Monastyrsky, one of Zelenskiy’s top aides, is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to die in the war that Russia launched on Feb. 24 last year.
Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, wore all black and carried floral tributes.
“Ukraine is losing its best sons and daughters every day,” Zelenskiy said in a statement.
“It hurts to think about it, it hurts to talk about it now,” he added in his evening address.
The cause of the crash that killed him and 13 others when the chopper fell near a kindergarten is still being investigated.
US officials said Ukraine still faced an uphill battle against Russian forces who occupy one-fifth of the country 11 months after invading.
However, they spoke of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks to retake parts of its territory.
However, the Kremlin on Friday said that Western tanks would make little difference on the battlefield.
“One should not exaggerate the importance of such supplies in terms of the ability to change something,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: MOFA demanded Beijing stop its military intimidation and ‘irrational behavior’ that endanger peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region The Presidential Office yesterday called on China to stop all “provocative acts,” saying ongoing Chinese military activity in the nearby waters of Taiwan was a “blatant disruption” of the “status quo” of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Defense officials said they have detected Chinese ships since Monday, both off Taiwan and farther out along the first island chain. They described the formations as two walls designed to demonstrate that the waters belong to China. The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said it had detected 53 military aircraft operating around the nation over the past 24 hours, as well
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
LEAP FORWARD: The new tanks are ‘decades more advanced than’ the army’s current fleet and would enable it to compete with China’s tanks, a source said A shipment of 38 US-made M1A2T Abrams tanks — part of a military procurement package from the US — arrived at the Port of Taipei early yesterday. The vehicles are the first batch of 108 tanks and other items that then-US president Donald Trump announced for Taiwan in 2019. The Ministry of National Defense at the time allocated NT$40.5 billion (US$1.25 billion) for the purchase. To accommodate the arrival of the tanks, the port suspended the use of all terminals and storage area machinery from 6pm last night until 7am this morning. The tanks are expected to be deployed at the army’s training
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS