German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday his country will rush modern anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems to Ukraine as the world is called on to do even more to finance and back Kyiv against Moscow.
His promise to Kyiv came just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden announced he was releasing advanced rocket systems to help Ukrainian forces repel their Russian invaders.
AP reports Scholz told lawmakers Ukraine will receive IRIS-T SLM missiles developed by Germany together with other NATO nations along with radar systems to help locate and destroy enemy artillery.
The German leader said with the help of these systems, Ukraine will be in a position “to protect an entire major city from Russian air attacks.”
Scholz also said Germany has vowed to give Ukraine tracking radar capable of detecting enemy howitzers, mortars and rocket artillery, according to local outlet Deutsche Welle.
In his speech to the Bundestag, Scholz said Berlin would send multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine in close coordination with the USA. These systems would not be able to target Russian territory.
The twin U.S. and German announcements followed others by countries as far away as Australia to back Ukrainian forces with equipment as they are engaged in a grinding battle for the eastern industrial region of the Donbas.
A Royal Australian Air Force air movements operator from No. 23 Squadron guides a Bushmaster protected mobility vehicle bound for Ukraine onto a C-17A Globemaster III aircraft at RAAF Base Amberley, Queensland. Australia’s response follows a direct request from President Zelensky during his address to a joint sitting of the Parliament of Australia on 31 March 2022. (Australian Defence Force)
Following a series of setbacks in the weeks after their invasion, Russian troops switched their focus to the Donbas and are bent on capturing the parts of the region not already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, the AP report continued.
In the Donbas, Russian forces have seized half of a key eastern Ukrainian city in a “frenzied push,” the Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Tuesday.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of the larger Luhansk region, meanwhile, said that most of the city, Sievierodonetsk, was under Russian control, though he added that fierce fighting continued and the city wasn’t surrounded.
Germany’s move followed criticism at home and abroad that Berlin has been slow to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself against Russia.