Merz promises new aid to Kiev, but not the Taurus missiles. The chancellor also announces that Berlin will “do everything” to block North Stream 2.
This morning the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky He visited Berlin. Here he met the German Chancellor Friedrich Merzwith which he held a bilateral interview. Zelensky’s visit had a dual goal: to obtain the continuous military support of Germany and relaunch the appeal to impose greater pressure on Moscow in view of the negotiations.
In the press conference that followed the bilateral, the German chancellor, who had always shown greater assertiveness towards Russia in the election campaign than its predecessor Olaf Scholz, said that Germany “will continue to lend and increase its military support for Ukrainians”.
Even the Ukrainian president exploited the opportunity to request greater pressure on Moscow, stating that “the sanctions must be strengthened, the extension of the war must be painful for Russia”.
There was a lot of wait for the possible go -ahead of the Chancellor Merz to the delivery of German -made cruise missiles Taurus to Ukraine. Vana waiting, because in this regard, the chancellor has limited itself to promising collaboration in the production of long -range weapons. The announcement was obviously very pompous: “Today we took a first step towards a cooperation between Germany and Ukrainian in the production of long -range weapons, and this will also be an industrial cooperation, which can take place both in Ukraine and here in Germany”.
Berlin and Kiev will therefore start the “common production” of long -range armaments, which, however, will probably require a long time before producing tangible results, without forgetting that future Ukrainian plants will certainly be targeted by Moscow.
In any case, as predictable, the Russian reaction was not long in coming, with the President’s spokesperson Dmitri Peskov Who promptly declared: “It is nothing more than a further provocation to the war, it is nothing more than a further attempt to force Ukrainians to continue fighting”.
Always during the conference, Merz announced that soon Germany will win a new package of military aid worth 5 billionthese “will serve the construction of long -range weapons, and new supplies for the Ukrainian army for contrast systems, weapons and ammunition”.
The chancellor then put a tombstone on the gas pipeline North Stream 2: «We will therefore continue to increase the pressure on Russia, to weaken the Moscow war machine, but also to open the way for negotiations. As for Germany, we will do everything possible to ensure that North Stream 2 cannot be put into operation ».
On the negotiations front, where in recent days the American president Donald Trump he had outsourced his anger by asserting that Putin was “kidding with fire», Today Zelensky has announced that the head of the Ukrainian delegation for negotiations, the Minister of Defense UMEROVand the Russian counterpart Medinsky They held telephone interviews to update themselves on the sending of their respective memorandums to carry on the negotiations.
Ukraine would have already sent his, Russia not yet, but Zelensky has reported that the head of delegation Russian has assured that the Moscow document will also have also occurred.
In the meantime, however, Reuters He reported the questions that Russia will ask the West to cease the war in Ukraine: according to the sources mentioned, Moscow asks The written guarantee that NATO will no longer expand to the east (thus excluding Ukrainian, Georgia and Moldova) from the alliance, the removal of some sanctions, the formal neutrality of Ukraine and a solution regarding the Russian assets frozen in Europe.
